CULT: A unified framework for tracing and logging C-based designs

This paper presents a novel framework for tracing and logging C-based designs of embedded hardware/software systems. The development of this C-based Unified Logging and Tracing (CULT) framework was driven by the necessity of a common development support environment between different design disciplines and at different early design phases in which development takes place using C-based languages (C/C++/SystemC). The elaborated framework is highly configurable and scalable. It requires only minimal code changes in order to be used and it implements enhanced features as a dynamic configurable history and backtracking of signals and values. Further, we demonstrate the interconnection with assertion-based verification (ABV) in order to support design testing and validation in early design phases. The framework will be released as open-source project for establishing a vital community and for building up a tooling landscape around the basic capabilities.