Article: A fast MPI-based parallel framework for cycle-accurate HDL multi-parametric simulations Journal: International Journal of High Performance Systems Architecture (IJHPSA) 2010 Vol.2 No.3/4 pp.187 - 202 Abstract: The growing complexity of digital architectures strongly impacts on their verification phase, which becomes critical. In fact, without giving up cycle-accuracy, it seems there are not at the state-of-the-art fast frameworks allowing multi-parametric simulations at a fine granularity level for accurate verification and design space exploration purposes. In this paper, we propose a parallel, fast and cycle-accurate SystemC simulation framework: SysCgrid. SysCgrid is designed to provide automatic generation and parallel execution of multi-parametric simulations with minimum effort by hardware architects. This framework is conceived to run on a cluster/grid computing infrastructure, exploiting the message passing interface (MPI) to automatically distribute the multi-parametric simulation set over more than one node. The achieved results on a network-on-chip (NoC) architecture verification demonstrate the good SysCgrid scalability, both in case of shared and non-shared memory computing infrastructures, achieving impressive speed up with respect to traditional single-run simulations approaches. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: A fast MPI-based parallel framework for cycle-accurate HDL multi-parametric simulations

Authors: Danilo Pani, Francesca Palumbo, Luigi Raffo

Addresses: DIEE – Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, 09123, Italy. ' DIEE – Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, 09123, Italy. ' DIEE – Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, 09123, Italy

Abstract: The growing complexity of digital architectures strongly impacts on their verification phase, which becomes critical. In fact, without giving up cycle-accuracy, it seems there are not at the state-of-the-art fast frameworks allowing multi-parametric simulations at a fine granularity level for accurate verification and design space exploration purposes. In this paper, we propose a parallel, fast and cycle-accurate SystemC simulation framework: SysCgrid. SysCgrid is designed to provide automatic generation and parallel execution of multi-parametric simulations with minimum effort by hardware architects. This framework is conceived to run on a cluster/grid computing infrastructure, exploiting the message passing interface (MPI) to automatically distribute the multi-parametric simulation set over more than one node. The achieved results on a network-on-chip (NoC) architecture verification demonstrate the good SysCgrid scalability, both in case of shared and non-shared memory computing infrastructures, achieving impressive speed up with respect to traditional single-run simulations approaches.

Keywords: HDL simulation; message passing interface; MPI; SystemC; parallel framework; multi-parametric simulation; network-on-chip; NoC simulator; cluster computing; grid computing; SysCgrid; high performance systems architecture.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPSA.2010.034540

International Journal of High Performance Systems Architecture, 2010 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.187 - 202

Received: 02 Oct 2009
Accepted: 03 Mar 2010
Published online: 07 Aug 2010 *

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Title: A fast MPI-based parallel framework for cycle-accurate HDL multi-parametric simulations

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