 | | | | Concurrent design or co-design is the joint design of the hardware and software parts of an electronic system. |
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| | | Concurrent simulation or co-simulation is the joint simulation of the hardware and software parts of an electronic system. In addition to hardware simulation, software simulation requires reproducing the behavior of a real-time operating system. |
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| What is the difference between transaction-level and message-level modeling? |
| | Transaction-Level Modeling (TLM) and Message-Level Modeling (MLM) are both abstract modeling techniques at respectively the transaction and message levels. Modeling electronic systems at a high abstraction level allows designers to remove implementation details, therefore speeding-up simulation time by a factor of 10 to 1000x compared to Register-Transfer Level (RTL) simulation. It enables the exploration and validation of multiple implementation alternatives at a high level of abstraction.
TLM considers that components communicate by exchanging data through atomic read/write blocking and non-blocking primitives. Transaction-level is an abstraction level above RTL. TLM communications protocols are usually bus-cycle accurate.
MLM considers that components communicate by exchanging data through high-level send/receive-like primitives. Message-level is an abstraction level above transaction-level. MLM usually benefits from an additional 10x simulation speed-up compared to TLM. MLM communications protocols can be predictable depending on the formalism used.
Models designed with CoFluent Studio define communications at the message-level and are predictable. |
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| What is a virtual architecture? |
| | | A virtual architecture is a realistic representation of a system before it’s developed and/or manufactured (production). A virtual architecture is a computer-based co-simulation model that enables developers to study all the properties of a system such as behavior, performances, power consumption and cost. Thus, developers can validate their design solution before entering a costly manufacturing cycle. |
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| What is a virtual prototype? |
| | | A virtual prototype is a representation of a system in a hardware and/or software description language. It can be directly used for implementation and/or synthesis purpose, or for a more detailed co-simulation. In the latter case, the virtual prototype can be a computer-based simulation model (running on e.g. a RTOS simulation environment or RTL simulator), a hardware emulation model (running on e.g. an FPGA emulator), or a mix of both. It behaves at speed from 10 to 1,000,000x slower than a real prototype/product. |
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| What does a specification activity consist of? |
| | | A specification activity is an analysis (deductive)-type of activity which goal is defining WHAT a system is doing from an external viewpoint (functional specifications) and how WELL it behaves (non-functional specifications). The end-result is a specifications model. |
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| What does a design activity consist of? |
| | | A design activity is a synthesis (constructive)-type of activity which goal is defining HOW a system is structured and operating from an internal viewpoint. The end-result is a design model. |
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| What does a prototyping activity consist of? |
| | | A prototyping activity is an implementation-type of activity which goal is describing a system’s complete behavior in an executable form. The end-result is a prototype. The prototype can be virtual or real (using real components). |
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| | | A System-on-Chip (SoC) is a complex integrated circuit (IC) that includes the various components that usually form an electronic system into a single chip of silicon. A SoC includes one or more microprocessors, DSPs, memories, specialized controllers, FPGA reconfigurable parts, interconnected through one or more internal buses. |
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