Research Article
FREACSIM - A Framework for Creating and Simulating Real-Time Capable Network on Chip Systems and Applications
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/eai.24-8-2015.2260960, author={Dominik Sch\o{}nwetter and Ronald Veldema and Dietmar Fey}, title={FREACSIM - A Framework for Creating and Simulating Real-Time Capable Network on Chip Systems and Applications}, proceedings={Eighth EAI International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques}, publisher={ACM}, proceedings_a={SIMUTOOLS}, year={2015}, month={8}, keywords={embedded network on chip real-time simulation software-based routing}, doi={10.4108/eai.24-8-2015.2260960} }- Dominik Schönwetter
Ronald Veldema
Dietmar Fey
Year: 2015
FREACSIM - A Framework for Creating and Simulating Real-Time Capable Network on Chip Systems and Applications
SIMUTOOLS
ICST
DOI: 10.4108/eai.24-8-2015.2260960
Abstract
This paper presents the new Framework for Real-time capable Embedded system and ArChitecture SIMulation (FREACSIM), a highly configurable full-system simulation environment enabling and easing the modeling, simulation and verification of Network on Chip architectures for hard real-time systems. The framework is mostly geared towards software developers, supporting them in the simulation of NoCs at an instruction accurate level and offers a broad variety of real-world hardware components as part of the integrated virtualization toolbox.
FREACSIM provides a software-based routing strategy between nodes, with a single node consisting of a processor and required peripherals for enabling real-time capability. This allows a flexible and independent comparison of currently implemented hardware strategies, as well as an easy adaption to better suit new hardware needs. The software-based routing, as well as distributed applications that can be implemented for the NoC hardware design, are able to use the real-time operating system eCos, which is part of our framework. As a result, real-time capable software can be implemented for, and tested on, complex NoC systems.
We demonstrate the flexibility and the benefits of our framework with a set of applications (use cases), which cover typical heavy and light load distributions between communication and computation.
