Abstract

More and more embedded system developers and system-on-chip designers reply on microprocessor-based design methodology to reduce time-to market. ARM processor has been a major player in embedded system industry over the last 10 years. However, there are many restrictions on developing embedded software using ARM processor in the early design stage. For those who are not familiar with embedded software equipment, testing their software on a real ARM hardware platform is a challenging job. To overcome such a problem, we have designed Virtual ARM Platform, which offers easier testing and debugging environment to ARM based embedded system developers. Major benefits that can be achieved by utilizing a Virtual ARM platform are (1) reducing development cost, (2) lowering the entrance barrier for embedded system novices, and (3) making it easier to test and debug embedded software designs. Unlike many other purely software-oriented ARM simulators which are independent of real hardware platforms, our proposed Virtual ARM Platform is specifically targeted
on SYS-Lab 5000 ARM hardware platform, (designed by Libertron, Inc.,) which means that Virtual ARM Platform imitates behaviors of embedded software as if the software is running on the target embedded hardware as closely as possible. This paper shows how Virtual ARM Platform is designed and how it can be used to reduce design time and cost.

[摘要]
越來越多的嵌入式系統(tǒng)開發(fā)人員和片上系統(tǒng)設(shè)計師采用microprocessor-based(基于微處理器的)設(shè)計方法，以減少推向市場的時間。在過去的10年里，ARM處理器一直都是嵌入式系統(tǒng)行業(yè)的主角之一。然而，在早期設(shè)計階段，有許多對基于ARM處理器的嵌入式軟件開發(fā)的限制。對于那些不熟悉嵌入式軟件設(shè)備的人來說，在ARM硬件平臺上測試他們的軟件是一項異常艱巨的工作。為克服這些問題，我們?yōu)榛贏RM的嵌入式系統(tǒng)開發(fā)人員設(shè)計了虛擬的ARM平臺，提供更容易測試和調(diào)試的環(huán)境。使用虛擬ARM平臺的好處是：(1)減少開發(fā)成本，(2)對于初學者降低了入門的難度，以及(3)讓您更輕松地測試和調(diào)試嵌入式軟件。與許多其他的純粹以軟件為導(dǎo)向且獨立于硬件平臺的ARM模擬器不同，我們的虛擬ARM平臺是專門針對SYS-Lab 5000 ARM硬件平臺(由Libertron公司負責設(shè)計制造)研發(fā)的，這意味著我們的平臺可以盡可能地模仿在目標硬件上的嵌入式軟件的各種行為。本文旨在介紹我們的虛擬ARM平臺的設(shè)計思想以及它在減少設(shè)計時間和開銷方面的一些應(yīng)用。