A Mixed-Level Virtual Prototyping Environment for Refinement-Based Design Environment

The communication architecture template tree (CAT-tree) is an abstraction of the specific range of communication functions and architectures, which can facilitate system function capture and communication architecture refinement. In this paper, we explain a TLM-RTL-SW mixed-level simulation environment that is useful for the functional verification of partially refined system models. We employed SystemC, GNU Gdb and a HDL simulator for the simulation of CATtree-based TLM, SW and HW, respectively. We also employed a new operating system, DEOS so that each SystemC-based TLMs can be cross-compiled to be executed as software models on the target processors. We evaluated the flexibility and simulation performance of the virtual simulation environment with an H.264 decoder design example