DESIGN VIEW is the summary of the complete DESIGN SOLUTION contributed article, which begins on Page 2.
Conventional hardware debugging techniques can't keep up with today's complex network products. As a result, design bugs remain unseen until system hardware is prototyped. Fortunately, designers have a better alternative: using software simulation to find system bugs and performance bottlenecks early in the design cycle. Soft-ware simulation changes the development flow to let designers check performance and correct an architecture as needed, without building a hardware prototype. Bugs are then found and fixed early in the design cycle.
In a conventional design-flow process, designers can debug, test, and optimize the hardware and software only after the software is executed on a prototype board. If a large performance problem emerges, the designer would have to re-adjust the architecture and potentially modify the schematic and circuit board. What this translates into is a schedule slip of typically two to five months or a sacrifice in function or performance. Further hindering the conventional flow is the increased use of sophisticated network processor units (NPUs) to process packets in the datapath and perform management functions in a separate CPU.
Software simulation of the NPU and elements that connect to it can circumvent conventional debugging problems. This system-level architectural modeling offers maximum visibility and control. System-level simulations are usually data-accurate models, which don't consider timing of the device. To address timing, both data- and cycle-accurate models exist.
Discussed in this article are the many benefits of system-level simulation. The article also points out what to look for once the decision is made to take the software route.
Full article begins on Page 2
DESIGN VIEW is the summary of the complete DESIGN SOLUTION contributed article, which begins on Page 2.
Conventional hardware debugging techniques can't keep up with today's complex network products. As a result, design bugs remain unseen until system hardware is prototyped. Fortunately, designers have a better alternative: using software simulation to find system bugs and performance bottlenecks early in the design cycle. Soft-ware simulation changes the development flow to let designers check performance and correct an architecture as needed, without building a hardware prototype. Bugs are then found and fixed early in the design cycle.
In a conventional design-flow process, designers can debug, test, and optimize the hardware and software only after the software is executed on a prototype board. If a large performance problem emerges, the designer would have to re-adjust the architecture and potentially modify the schematic and circuit board. What this translates into is a schedule slip of typically two to five months or a sacrifice in function or performance. Further hindering the conventional flow is the increased use of sophisticated network processor units (NPUs) to process packets in the datapath and perform management functions in a separate CPU.
Software simulation of the NPU and elements that connect to it can circumvent conventional debugging problems. This system-level architectural modeling offers maximum visibility and control. System-level simulations are usually data-accurate models, which don't consider timing of the device. To address timing, both data- and cycle-accurate models exist.
Discussed in this article are the many benefits of system-level simulation. The article also points out what to look for once the decision is made to take the software route.
Full article begins on Page 2