Automatic instrumentation of embedded software for high level hardware/software co-simulation

We propose an automatic instrumentation method for embedded software annotation to enable performance modeling in high level hardware/software co-simulation environments. The proposed ldquocross-annotationrdquo technique consists of extending a retargetable compiler infrastructure to allow the automatic instrumentation of embedded software at the basic block level. Thus, target and annotated native binaries are guaranteed to have isomorphic control flow graphs (CFG). The proposed method takes into account the processor-specific optimizations at the compiler level and proves to be accurate with low simulation overhead.