LEON2/3 Integer Unit - SystemC
This page describes the SystemC IP-Cores relative to the Integer Unit of the LEON2 and LEON3 processors;
note that, often, such high level models of hardware processors are also called
Instruction Set Simulators (ISS).
With respect to RTL or Gate-Level descriptions, ISSs eliminate much of the
modeling and simulation overhead by focusing on the
architecture status that is visible to programmers according to
the Instruction-Set-Architecture (ISA); other architectural features are only modeled when strictly necessary.
Manually hand-codying such simulators is a
tedious, lengthy, and error-prone task; hence the need for Architecture Description Languages (ADLs),
devised to enable automatic generation of tools to
support the design process starting from high-level abstract descriptions.
The design and implementation of the SystemC IP-Cores of the LEON2 and LEON3 processors
presented in this page has been carried out using the
TRAP Architectural Description Language.
TRAP
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Structure of the TRAP Architectural Description Language
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TRAP (TRansactional Automatic Processor generator) is a tool for the automatic
generation of processor simulators starting from high level
descriptions of the architecture.
TRAP is an Open Source tool released under the LGPL license; development status and periodical
snapshots can be found
on http://trap-gen.googlecode.com.
TRAP has been developed at Politecnico di Milano with partial support from the European Space
Agency.
The Instruction Set Simulators generated by TRAP are based on the OSCI SystemC 2.2.0
library and, for modeling the processor's communication interfaces, on the new OSCI TLM 2.0 standard.
Depending on the desired accuracy/simulation speed trade-off, different flavors of simulators can
be created.
In addition to the ISS itself,
TRAP provides tools for the ISS's monitoring, debugging, exacting performance figures, etc..
Being such tools part of TRAP, they are also included in the LEON2/3 ISSs.
Only the integer unit of the LEON2/3 Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) is modeled: the idea is that the other elements
of the SoCs, such
as the cache, the AMBA buses, etc. are developed as separate SystemC IP-Cores.
Different simulators are provided, each one with different timing accuracy:
- Functional (or Standalone) without the use of SystemC: this model cannot be plugged in a system-level simulation platform,
and it can just be used for the emulation of the described processor, with the aim of validating and debugging software.
No performance results can be extracted from such a model, apart from statistics concerning the number of executed instructions.
- Instruction Accurate with Loosely Timed (LT) or Approximate Timed (AT) TLM 2.0 interfaces;
such models exhibit high simulation speed and
good timing accuracy, aroung 99.3% with respect to actual processor.
- Cycle Accurate with AT interfaces, enabling accurate timing with respect to both the
communication with external memories and the processor structure (pipeline stages, hazards,
bypasses, etc.).
Such a model is more than one order of magnitude slower than the Instruction Accurate ones.
Simulator performance has been measured on a set of 26 applications and benchmarks taken from
the MiBench suite,
from standard kernels such as fft, aes, des, and complete applications like jpeg; each of these applications has been
compiled using different optimization levels, yielding a total of 104 different executable files.
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Average Execution Speed of the LEON3 Processor Model
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Assessment of the timing accuracy of the LEON2 and LEON3 Instruction Accurate models has been measured using the GRSIM simulator (from Aeroflex Gaisler) as
a reference model; the same 104 executable files used to quantify the simulator speed have been executed
on both GRSIM and the LEON2/3 ISSs, yielding an average accuracy of 99.3%.
For more informations on the models and please see the documents posted
on the right menu of this webpage.
The LEON2/3 SystemC IP-Cores can be licensed for space research and/or commercial use, under specific
conditions to companies based in ESA member and participant states; please refer to the
Related Articles posted on the right of this webpage for more information.
Developers and contributors
Luca Fossati (Politecnico di Milano / ESA) - v0.31, TRAP version 0.59 (2009 - 2012)
Last update: 18 December 2012
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Related articles
| | • | System-Level Modeling in SystemC (http://www.esa.int/TEC/Microelectronics/SEM6Z0AMT7G_0.html) | | | • | LEON2-FT - HDL (http://www.esa.int/TEC/Microelectronics/SEMUD70CYTE_0.html) | | | • | Licensing (http://www.esa.int/TEC/Microelectronics/SEM6SCV681F_0.html) | |
Related links
| | • | TRAP development website (https://trap-gen.googlecode.com) | | | • | OSCI SystemC and TLM (http://www.accellera.org/home/) | | | • | System Architectures Group (Politecnico di Milano) (http://sagroup.ws.dei.polimi.it/) | | | • | Aeroflex Gaisler GRSIM Simulator (http://www.gaisler.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content &task=view &id=141 &Itemid=86) | |
Related documents
| | • | LEON2/3 ISS Report (http://microelectronics.esa.int/core/ipdoc/LEON_SystemC_FinalReport.pdf) | | | • | LEON2/3 ISS user manual (http://microelectronics.esa.int/core/ipdoc/LEON_SystemC_UserManual.pdf) | | | • | LEON2 Standalone Simulator (http://microelectronics.esa.int/core/ipdoc/leon2_standalone_iss.tar.bz2) | | | • | LEON3 Standalone Simulator (http://microelectronics.esa.int/core/ipdoc/leon3_standalone_iss.tar.bz2) | | | • | ChangeLog (http://microelectronics.esa.int/core/ipdoc/LEON_SystemC_ChangeLog.txt) | |
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