Models of ARM Cortex-M cores for complex software development

EDN Europe, 09 Dec 2010

Imperas has released its first models of the Cortex family of processor cores from ARM. Models of the M-series available from Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) include example virtual platforms incorporating the cores, which Imperas also supports within its advanced software development tools. Imperas focuses on enabling comprehensive and rigorous software development for complex projects, in an accurately-simulated virtual environment. Imperas intends to use these and other models as part of its collaboration with Cadence Design Systems under Cadence’s “EDA360” vision for System Realisation.
You can obtain the processor core models and example platforms from the Open Virtual Platforms website, www.OVPworld.org/ARM. The models of the ARM Cortex processor cores, as well as models of the other ARM processors including the ARM7, ARM9, ARM10 and ARM11 families, work with the Imperas and OVP simulators and, Imperas says, have shown performance of hundreds of millions of instructions per second.
OVP processor models are instruction-accurate, and structured for maximum speed, to enable embedded software developers – especially those building hardware-dependent software such as firmware and bare metal applications – to have a development environment available early to accelerate the software development cycle. You can create virtual platforms using the core models, with the OVP peripheral and platform models, or you can integrate the processor models into SystemC/TLM-2.0 based virtual platforms using a native TLM-2.0 interface. The OVP simulator also has an integration path to the Eclipse IDE (integrated development environment). The core models also work with Imperas’ tools for multicore software verification, analysis and debug, including tools for software development on virtual platforms; for example, OS and CPU-aware tracing, profiling and code analysis.
You can obtain models of the ARM Cortex M-series, including Cortex-M3, immediately; core models for other ARM Cortex cores will be available within the next 16 weeks. OVP already offers ARM developers access to models of other ARM processors, including processors which use the v4, v5 and v6 ARM instruction sets. OVP also has reference virtual platforms incorporating the ARM cores, including bare metal platforms, a virtual platform of an Atmel AT91sam7 processor (based on an ARM7 core), and a virtual platform of the ARM IntegratorCP development board using the ARM926EJ-S. With this platform you can boot Linux, in a virtual environment, in under 10 seconds on a 2GHz laptop using OVPsim. You can obtain the reference platforms as source code, and modify them to add or change memory and peripheral components.
Imperas’ President and CEO Simon Davidmann says the system-realisation aspect of Cadence’s EDA 360 initiative fits well with Imperas’ objectives. The ever-growing proportion of a project that software comprises cannot be effectively developed and verified, in the timescales that today’s projects demand, in anything other than an ultra-fast simulation, virtual-platform, context, Davidmann believes. Imperas has joined the Cadence System Realization Alliance and has integrated its technology, including OVP and advanced software development tools, with Cadence’s Incisive Enterprise Simulator and Incisive Software Extensions products.