OPERAS-an object-oriented signal processing system architecture simulator

The design of a low-power digital signal processor requires an energy-driven approach to optimize the processing algorithm and hardware architecture over area, time and energy. In addition, the detailed understanding of the interactions between algorithm and architecture is crucial for the overall energy optimized system design and partitioning. To accurately characterize a system, a complete algorithm and architecture need to be simulated together over a representative set of input signals, and the simulator´s speed is important. The existing academic and commercial simulation tools lack the ability to efficiently model the energy consumption of a complete system. The authors introduce OPERAS (Object-oriented Power Estimating Restructurable Architecture Simulator), an object-oriented system simulator with power estimation capability. OPERAS´s design uses object-oriented principles and efficient C++ language to model and simulate the system behavior