Web-Based Simulators for Digital Signal Processors and Microcontrollers

• Goals
  • Develop a configurable, extensible Web-based framework for simulating software using instruction set architecture simulators and processor boards.
  • Develop portable instruction set architecture simulators and board-level tools for digital signal processors (DSPs) and microcontrollers and integrate them into the framework.
  • Release the source code for the framework on the Internet on a regular basis.
• Status
  • Five prototypes developed and released so far.
  • The most recent prototype contains simulators for the Texas Instruments TMS320C30 digital signal processor, Motorola MC68HC11 microcontroller, and the Motorola MC56811 digital signal processor, as well as an interface to a Motorola MC56LC811 DSP board.
  • Web-enabled Simulation framework.
• Impact:
  • cosimulation of complex system designs: a design may contain many different DSP processors cooperating with other embedded processors and special-purpose hardware devices (ASICs, FPGAs, etc.)
  • architectural tradeoffs in a system design: with more simulators available, a system designer can decide which combination of TI DSP processors delivers enough performance for a given economic cost
  • Web-based tools: users would no longer require an interface to a physical board so many more people can access embedded processor technology on the Web
• Requirements: knowledge of
  • C/C++ - EE360C Data Structures in C++
  • assembly language - EE319K Microprocessor Programming
  • microprocessor architectures - EE345L Microprocessor Applications and Organization or EE345S Real-Time Digital Signal Processing Laboratory
• What you will learn: DSP architectures, programming in C++ and/or Java, and software development tools in Unix such as makefiles, debuggers, source code control, and Purify
• Possible awards: projects completed this academic year may be entered into the following contests:
  • projects on Texas Instruments processors may be entered in the Texas Instruments DSP Solutions Challenge contest
  • projects on Motorola processors may be entered in the Motorola Design Contest
• Resources:
  • Presentations:
    • Web-Based Simulators of Embedded Software for Programmable Digital Signal Processors
    • EE382C Embedded Software Systems Lectures
    • Software Development in the Unix Environment
  • Java: FAQ - Javasoft
  • Related newsgroups on simulation and emulation: comp.simulation - comp.emulators.announce
  • TMS320C30
    • Tutorial
    • VirtuaLab
    • DSK source code
    • GNU C-based C30/40 simulator
  • TMS320C50
    • Assembler and Loader
    • DSK Tools
    • TMS320C20 DSK Tools (the C50 is derived from the C20)
  • Motorola 56000 DSP tools: pre-compiled simulator engine libraries and source code for the user interfaces are available from Marketing on a CD ROM
  • MC68HC11 simulators
    • NMSU simulator engine, March 1994, by Ted Dunning:
      written in C, source code included, Unix version
    • Sim6811 version 1.3, October 1996, by Tomaso Paoletti:
      written in C, source code included, Mac version, based on NMSU kernel
    • EM11, February 1997, by Bambang Sutanto:
      written in Turbo Pascal and Turbo Assembler, no source code, PC MSDOS version
    • sim68 version 2.2S, December 1994, by Perry Fisch:
      no source code, PC version
    • Simulator version 1.024, May 1997, by David Jones:
      written in Visual Basic, no source code, Windows 3.1/95/NT version
      (Alternate Site)
  • MC68HC11 resources from Russ Hersch - Roger Schaefer - Bob Boy
• References:
  • "Pocket guide to popular DSP processors and cores," Berkeley Design Technology, Inc., Freemont, CA, 1997. http://www.bdti.com/pocket/dsp.
  • "Web-Based Electronic Design (WELD) Project," http://www-cad.eecs.berkeley.edu/Respep/Research/weld/, Directed by Richard A. Newton, Dept. of Electrical Eng. and Comp. Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720.
  • K. L. Hansen, I. A. MacLeod, D. R. McGregor, and I. M. Tulloch, "Briefmaker: a design briefing tool developed on the internet," Proc. Int. Conf. on Information Technology in Civil and Structural Engineering Design, Glasgow, UK, pp. 69-73, Aug. 1996.
  • C. S. Smith and P. K. Wright, "Cybercut: a World Wide Web based design-to-fabrication tool," Journal of Manufacturing Systems, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 432-442, 1996.
  • K. Wimmer, M. Noell, W. J. Taylor, and M. Orlowski, "A data-model for a technology and simulation archive," Proc. Int. Conf. on Simulation of Semiconductor Devices, Austin, Texas, pp. 54-57, Sep. 1995.
  • Y.-L. Lin, "Computing brokerage and its application in VLSI design," Proc. Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conf., Chiba, Japan, pp. 65-69, Jan. 1997.
  • L. T. Walczowski, W. A. J. Waller, and D. Nalbantis, "VLSI design training with the help of the World Wide Web," Proc. IEE Colloquium on Learning at a Distance: Developments in Media Technologies, London, UK, June 1996.
  • L. Benini and A. B. G. D. Micheli, "Distributed EDA tool integration: the PPP paradigm," Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Computer Design, Austin, Texas, pp. 448--53, Oct. 1996.
  • D. D. Gajski, F. Vahid, S. Narayan, and J. Gong, Specification and Design of Embedded Systems, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1994.
  • Texas Instruments, Inc., Dallas, Texas, TMS320C3x User's Guide, 1994.
  • P. Lapsley, J. Bier, A. Shoham, and E. A. Lee, DSP Processor Fundamentals: Architectures and Features, Fremont, CA: Berkeley Design Technology, Inc., 1996.
  • D. Flanagan, Java in a Nutshell, O'Reilly and Associates, 1996.
  • D. Comer, Internetworking with TCP/IP, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1995.
  • D. Geary and A. McClellan, Graphic Java, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1997.
• Undergraduate Projects:
  • Project #1 (Chris Moy, Fall 96; Chi Duong, Summer and Fall 1997): Build a fast instruction set architecture simulator for the floating-point TMS320C30 processor based on the disassembler written by Texas Instruments for their C30 Digital Signal Processor Starter Kit
  • Project #2 (Dogu Arifler, Spring and Fall 1997): Write a Java server and configurable Java applet user interface for the C30 instruction set architecture simulator. We call this framework the Web-Enabled Simulation environment.
  • Project #3 (Saleem Marwat, Summer 1997): Build a Web-based simulator for the Motorola MC68HC11 microcontroller based on a freely distributable simulators.
  • Project #4 (Anna Yuan, Fall 1997): Build a Web-based interface to an MC56L811EVM DSP Evaluation Module and an MC56L811 DSP instruction set architecture simulator. Proposal
  • Project #5 (Ha Nguyen and Han Nguyen, Fall 1997): Build a fast disassembler for the TMS320C20 and TMS320C50 fixed-point DSP processors based on the source code for the disassembler written for the C20 and C30 DSKs by Keith Larson. The C50 is a derivative of the C20. The freely distributable source code for the C30 disassembler serves as a good starting point. Each disassembler can be tested by generating random opcodes, disassembling them, assemblying the results using a validated assembler, and comparing the assembled opcodes to the original opcodes.
  • Project #6 (Kong Susanto and Eshan Khan, Spring 1998): Build command line interfaces to tools for the TMS320C30 DSP Starter Kit (DSK) to put the board online
  • Project #7 (OPEN): Build an instruction set architecture simulator for the fixed-point TMS320C20 DSP processor based on the disassembler in Project #5.
  • Project #8 (OPEN): Build an instruction set architecture simulator for the fixed-point TMS320C50 DSP processor based on the disassembler in Project #5.
  • Project #9 (Tim Kao and Kurt Nee, Fall 1998): Build a Web-based instruction set architecture simulator and board-level debugger for the Motorola fixed-point 56300 digital signal processors based on the freely distributable tools. This requires modifying the user interface source code already provided by Motorola and follows the same path as Project #4.
  • Project #10 (Ben Nguyen, Fall 1998): Build a Web-based instruction set architecture simulators and board-level debuggers for the Motorola fixed-point 56000 and 56100 digital signal processors. This requires modifying the user interface source code already provided by Motorola and follows the same path as Project #4.
• Graduate Projects:
  • Project #1 (OPEN): Extend the simulators to return power estimates.
  • Project #2 (OPEN): Write a binary-to-binary translator that converts assembled C30 programs into binary executable programs on Unix workstations for ultra-fast simulation
  • Project #3 (OPEN): Write a binary-to-binary translator that converts assembled C50 programs into binary executable programs on Unix workstations for ultra-fast simulation
  • Project #4 (Juan Rubio and Wade Schwartzkopf, Spring 1998; Daniel Chan and Peter Ka Lee, Summer 1999): Write a binary-to-binary translator that converts C50 code to C54 code.
    Texas Instrument's C50-C54 Translator
  • Project #5 (OPEN): Write a binary-to-binary translator that converts C50 code to C203 code
  • Project #6 (OPEN): Add the Web-Enabled Simulation (WEDS) framework to the Web-Enabled Electronic Design (WELD) framework at UC Berkeley for distributed cosimulation of heterogeneous hardware/software implementations.

Updated 05/18/00.