This article is part of the series Design Methods for DSP Systems.

Open Access Research Article

A Fully Automated Environment for Verification of Virtual Prototypes

P Belanović*, B Knerr, M Holzer and M Rupp

Author Affiliations

Institute of Communications and Radio Frequency Engineering, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna 1040, Austria

For all author emails, please log on.

EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing 2006, 2006:032408  doi:10.1155/ASP/2006/32408


The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://asp.eurasipjournals.com/content/2006/1/032408


Received: 15 October 2004
Revisions received: 29 March 2005
Accepted: 25 May 2005
Published: 18 May 2006

© 2006 Belanović et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The extremely dynamic and competitive nature of the wireless communication systems market demands ever shorter times to market for new products. Virtual prototyping has emerged as one of the most promising techniques to offer the required time savings and resulting increases in design efficiency. A fully automated environment for development of virtual prototypes is presented here, offering maximal efficiency gains, and supporting both design and verification flows, from the algorithmic model to the virtual prototype. The environment employs automated verification pattern refinement to achieve increased reuse in the design process, as well as increased quality by reducing human coding errors.

References

  1. GE Moore, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Electronics Magazine 38(8), 114–117 (1965)

  2. R Subramanian, Shannon vs Moore: driving the evolution of signal processing platforms in wireless communications. Proc. IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems (SIPS '02), October 2002, San Diego, Calif, USA, 2–2

  3. International SEMATECH, The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, Austin, Tex, USA, 1999

  4. G Karsai, J Sztipanovits, A Ledeczi, T Bapty, Model-integrated development of embedded software. Proc. IEEE 91(1), 145–164 (2003). Publisher Full Text OpenURL

  5. P Belanović, M Holzer, D Mičušík, M Rupp, Design methodology of signal processing algorithms in wireless systems. Proc. International Conference on Computer, Communication and Control Technologies (CCCT '03), July–August 2003, Orlando, Fla, USA, 288–291

  6. A Hemani, AK Deb, J Oberg, A Postula, D Lindqvist, B Fjellborg, System level virtual prototyping of DSP SOCs using grammar based approach. Design Automation for Embedded Systems 5(3-4), 295–311 (2000)

  7. CA Valderrama, A Changuel, AA Jerraya, Virtual prototyping for modular and flexible hardware-software systems. Design Automation for Embedded Systems 2(3-4), 267–282 (1997)

  8. NS Voros, L Sánchez, A Alonso, AN Birbas, M Birbas, A Jerraya, Hardware-software co-design of complex embedded systems: an approach using efficient process models, multiple formalism specification and validation via co-simulation. Design Automation for Embedded Systems 8(1), 5–49 (2003). Publisher Full Text OpenURL

  9. R Ernst, Codesign of embedded systems: status and trends. IEEE Des. Test. Comput. 15(2), 45–54 (1998). Publisher Full Text OpenURL

  10. P Varma, S Bhatia, A structured test re-use methodology for core-based system chips. Proc. IEEE International Test Conference (ITC '98), October 1998, Washington, DC, USA, 294–302

  11. B Stöhr, M Simmons, J Geishauser, FlexBench: reuse of verification IP to increase productivity. Proc. Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exposition (DATE '02), March 2002, Paris, France, 1131–1131

  12. Odin Technology, Axe Automated Testing Framework (2004, http://www), . odin.co.uk/downloads/AxeFlyer.pdf webcite

  13. P Belanović, M Holzer, B Knerr, M Rupp, G Sauzon, Automatic generation of virtual prototypes. Proc. 15th International Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping (RSP '04), June 2004, Geneva, Switzerland, 114–118

  14. P Belanović, B Knerr, M Holzer, G Sauzon, M Rupp, A consistent design methodology for wireless embedded systems. EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing Special issue on DSP enabled radio, 2005 OpenURL

  15. B Knerr, M Holzer, M Rupp, HW/SW partitioning using high level metrics. Proc. International Conference on Computer, Communication and Control Technologies (CCCT '04), August 2004, Austin, Tex, USA

  16. U Bortfeld, C Mielenz, White paper C++ System Simulation Interfaces Infineon, Munich, Germany, July 2000

  17. T Grötker, S Liao, G Martin, S Swan, System Design with SystemC (Kluwer Academic, Boston, Mass, USA, 2002)

  18. StarCore DSP, (http://www), . starcore-dsp.com webcite