Virtual ARM Platform for embedded system developers

More and more embedded system developers and system-on-chip designers reply on microprocessor-based design methodology to reduce time-to market. ARM processor has been a major player in embedded system industry over the last 10 years. However, there are many restrictions on developing embedded software using ARM processor in the early design stage. For those who are not familiar with embedded software equipment, testing their software on a real ARM hardware platform is a challenging job. To overcome such a problem, we have designed virtual ARM platform, which offers easier testing and debugging environment to ARM based embedded system developers. Major benefits that can be achieved by utilizing a virtual ARM platform are (1) reducing development cost, (2) lowering the entrance barrier for embedded system novices, and (3) making it easier to test and debug embedded software designs. Unlike many other purely software-oriented ARM simulators which are independent of real hardware platforms, our proposed virtual ARM platform is specifically targeted on SYS-Lab 5000 ARM hardware platform, (designed by Libertron, Inc.,) which means that virtual ARM platform imitates behaviors of embedded software as if the software is running on the target embedded hardware as closely as possible. This paper shows how virtual ARM platform is designed and how it can be used to reduce design time and cost.