Re: 'virtual HW' into kernel (SystemC)

From: Benjamin LaHaise
Date: Wed Sep 07 2005 - 09:22:56 EST


On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 12:31:07PM +0200, Màrius Montón wrote:
> At this point, we plan to develop a pci device driver to act as a bridge
> between kernel PCI subsystem and SystemC simulator (in user space).
>
> Do you think this implementation is fine? Maybe it's better to register
> a new bus
> subsystem and link to a daemon to user space to run SystemC simulations?
> We are open to any idea or suggestion about it.

That's actually quite a difficult approach to take as you aren't able to
fully simulate how the hardware interacts with the system, making concerns
like timing very difficult to accurately model. A better approach is to
tie into a full system simulator -- qemu makes it very easy to add a new
pci device into the system. This way your hardware simulator doesn't have
to worry about the complexities of kernel programming, and the resulting
device drivers doesn't need hooks for the simulator as it would see the
pci device as if it were installed in a system.

Btw, do you know of any inexpensive ways to be introduced SystemC
development on FPGAs? Cheers,

-ben
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/