Easy and structured approach for software and firmware co-simulation for bus centric designs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modular, software language-agnostic approach for co-simulating software and firmware in bus-centric FPGA designs, demonstrated on a high-energy physics data acquisition system.

Contribution

It presents a structured, easy-to-implement co-simulation method that is adaptable to various software languages and only requires bus accessibility in firmware.

Findings

Effective co-simulation of software and firmware in FPGA designs

Applicable to high-energy physics data acquisition systems

Modular approach enhances testing and development

Abstract

Although software and firmware co-simulation is gaining popularity, it is still not widely used in the FPGA designs. This work presents easy and structured approach for software and firmware co-simulation for bus centric designs. The proposed approach is very modular and software language agnostic. The only requirement is that the firmware design is accessible via some kind of system bus. The concept has been used for testing DAQ system being developed for high energy physics experiment.