SystemC Simulation Cockpit

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Simulations are currently accomplished by providing input test files and the simulations result in trace files and output files. Engineers would have better and easier control of the simulation is they had a visual an interactive framework for controlling the simulation in real time.

By analogy with flight simulation, this requires a "cockpit" to drive and control the simulation. The pilot cockpit drives the flight simulator, providing parameters to the flight simulation engine, the result being viewed immediately through the window. The SystemC cockpit similarly drives the SystemC simulation, providing input data and viewing output.

For example if the hardware modelled and simulated is an mpeg decoder processor, it is convenient to send mpeg data stream and view the output image forming in real time on the cockpit display, even though the image is not displayed at the same speed it would appear on the real hardware. Similarly it may be interesting to loop on selected input data and view the results as cumulative data charts and tables summarizing statistics and errors

The idea of the SystemC cockpit is to have an interactive environment to (a) configure the simulation (b) dynamically control the input data provided to the simulation as test data, for example program loops on the same input at specified frequencies (c) dynamically analyze and visualize the simulation output data.

In order to implement the SystemC cockpit, it is necessary to create a generic framework that will make it possible to configure the cockpit for a particular simulation (the cockpit will be different for a image processing than for a network controller) and configure the way input and output are dynamically conveyed to and from the simulator, to be analyzed and visualized in the cockpit

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