Modeling And Simulating Memory Hierarchies In A Platform-based Design Methodology

This paper presents an environment based on SystemC for architecture specification of programmable systems. Making use of the new architecture description language ArchC, able to capture the processor description as well as the memory subsystem configuration, this environment offers support for system-level specification, intended for platform-based design. As a case study, it is presented the memory architecture exploration for a simple image processing application, yet a more robust environment evaluation is performed through the execution of some real-world benchmarks.1734735ArchC Website, , http://www.archc.orgGaisler, J., (2003) The LEON Processor User's Manual Version 1.0.10, , Gaisler Research, JanuaryGivardis, T., Vahid, F., Henkel, J., System-level exploration for pareto-optimal configuration in parameterized system-on-a-chip (2002) IEEE Trans. on VLSI SystemsChang, H., (1999) Surviving the SOC Revolution: A Guide to Platform-based Design, , Kluwer Academic PublishersGuthaus, M.R., MiBench: A free, commercially representative embedded benchmark suite (2001) Proc. 4th IEEE Annual Workshop on Workload Characterization, , DecemberViana, P., Barros, E., Rigo, S., Azevedo, R., Araújo, G., Exploring memory hierarchy with ArchC (2003) Proc. of the 15th Symp. on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing (SBAC-PAD), , Novembe