Digital system simulation: methodologies and examples

Simulation serves many purposes during the design cycle of a digital system. In the early stages of design, high-level simulation is used for performance prediction and analysis. In the middle of the design cycle, simulation is used to develop the software algorithms and refine the hardware. In the later stages of design, simulation is used make sure performance targets are reached and to verify the correctness of the hardware and software. The different simulation objectives require varying levels of modeling detail. To keep design time to a minimum, it is critical to structure the simulation environment to make it possible to trade-off simulation performance for model detail in a flexible manner that allows concurrent hardware and software development. In this paper we describe the different simulation methodologies for developing complex digital systems, and give examples of one such simulation environment.