Abstract
Today’s virtual prototypes model complex many-core platforms. In application domains such as network processing, they may comprise hundreds of processors, which makes simulation speed the key issue due to the single-threaded execution semantics of SystemC. We propose CoMix, the Concurrent Model Interface, for the distributed simulation of large-scale SystemC models. CoMix provides robust communication between simulator peers, enables their loose synchronization, and manages the overall life cycle. It is an overlay technology neither requiring modified simulators nor depending on a hosts’ communication infrastructure. The CoMix framework is small (2k Lines of C++ Code) and easily deployable. We quantify its overhead on synthetic benchmarks and observe reasonable speedups for synthetic benchmarks as well as a large real-world example, e.g., 3.3X and 4X for a 4-peer simulation.
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Acknowledgements
In parts, this work has been supported by Lei Lang, Eric Frejd (Ericsson AB, Sweden), and Linmu Cui (Cadence, Germany).
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Sauer, C., Bluethgen, HM., Loeb, HP. (2016). A Framework for Distributed, Loosely-Synchronized Simulation of Complex SystemC/TLM Models. In: Oppenheimer, F., Medina Pasaje, J. (eds) Languages, Design Methods, and Tools for Electronic System Design. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 361. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24457-0_8
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