外文翻譯--為嵌入式系統(tǒng)開(kāi)發(fā)人員建立虛擬的arm平臺(tái)（英文）

1、978-1-4244-1724-7/08/$25.00©2008IEEE ICALIP2008 586Virtual ARM Platform for Embedded System Develope

2、rs Alex Heunhe Han, Young-Si Hwang, Young-Ho An, So-Jin Lee, Ki-Seok Chung Dept. of Electronics and Computer & Communications Engineering, Hanyang University alexhan@hanyang.ac.kr Abstract More and more embedded sy

3、stem 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. Howeve

4、r, 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 har

5、dware 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 th

6、at 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 de

7、signs. 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, (de

8、signed 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 Vi

9、rtual ARM Platform is designed and how it can be used to reduce design time and cost. 1. Introduction An embedded system is a special-purpose computer system designed to perform a small set of dedicated functions, so

10、metimes with real-time computing constraints. It is usually embedded as part of a complete device which includes hardware and mechanical parts. Embedded systems span all aspects of modern life and examples of thei

11、r use are numerous. Not only consumer electronics including personal digital assistants (PDAs), mp3 players, mobile phones but also telecommunications systems, transportation systems, and medical equipments employ nu

12、merous embedded systems such as mobile network system, anti-lock breaking system (ABS), GPS, electronic stethoscope. [1] One of the most important hardware components of an embedded system is microprocessor. M

13、icroprocessor has played a main role in development of IT industry, especially in popularization of personal computer (PC) and internet. Each microprocessor has its own characteristics as it is used in various catego

14、ries. [2] A series of ARM processors have RISC- type architectures, and they have been widely used in a number of embedded designs. Because of not only their high performance and low cost but also power saving featur

15、es, ARM variants are dominant in all corners of consumer electronics, from portable devices (PDAs, mobile phones, media players, handheld gaming units, and calculators) to computer peripherals (hard drives, desktop

16、routers). Virtual ARM Platform, which we are going to propose in this paper, is an ARM simulator designed considering target hardware. In contrast to other virtual ARM machines that have been designed only in soft

17、ware model, our Virtual ARM Platform enables most similar operations to target embedded system. By “similar operations”, we mean that our Virtual ARM Platform allows embedded system developers to develop and test the

18、ir embedded application as if they do on a real H/W platform. To implement a target- specific virtual ARM platform, we have chosen SYS- Lab5000 ARM hardware platform, (designed by Libertron, Inc.,) as our target H/W pl

19、atform. Since a target-specific virtual platform allows the target platform specific details to be tested without the real target platform, design time and cost can be greatly reduced. Especially, for educational ins

20、titutions where a sufficient number of embedded equipments are not deployed, this type of target specific virtual platform will be greatly helpful to teach students how to design a target specific embedded system whi

21、le minimally requiring the time to use the real hardware. Our Virtual ARM Platform implementation is based on ARM Authorized licensed use limited to: Zhengzhou University. Downloaded on February 25, 2009 at 05:15 from

22、IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.588Figure 3. Execution of Firmware Level Code in SimIT-ARM and H/W ARM Platform 3. Related work Recently, many different approaches have studied Virtual Tool for verification of embedde

23、d software in host PC. In this section, we briefly summarize some of them. As one of the most well-known simulators for ARM, ARMulator [5] can be used to provide virtual prototyping environment for embedded sys

24、tem development. By virtually implementing hardware IP and porting an OS such as μC/OS-II [6] on ARMulator, it is possible to carry out simulation without H/W platform. SimIt-ARM [3] is an instruction-set simulator

25、 that runs both system-level and user-level ARM programs. Also, SimIt-ARM supports two popular simulation styles: interpretation and dynamic compiled simulation. But as shown in Figure 3, SimIt-ARM cannot build

26、firmware-level executable program without linking I/O control codes with C Runtime Library (CRT), while hardware platform links I/O control codes with its startup code. Since initialization codes are different for ea

27、ch target platform, developers can’t use the same executable program in a virtual tool and a target H/W ARM platform. All these approaches have tried to offer developers to write a source code, build an executable p

28、rogram, and execute it in the host PC. But unfortunately, these tools can only simulate the executable file for a specific target microprocessor. Since it cannot simulate the execution for the whole target hardware p

29、latform, the control of peripheral devices is impossible, while imposing considerable limits in code simulations. Figure 4. Virtual ARM Platform Offering Control for Peripheral Devices 4. Implementation of virtual ARM

30、 platform We propose Virtual ARM Platform to offer extended control for peripheral devices which conventional ARM simulators cannot offer. By adding control codes for peripheral devices to existing ARM simulators suc

31、h as SimIT-ARM or SimpleScalar, Virtual ARM Platform can control peripheral devices such as LED, 7-segment, step motor, etc. Figure 4 shows the procedure of embedded system development using Virtual ARM Platform that

32、 offers “target-like” control for peripheral devices. Virtual ARM Platform consists of Virtual ARM Simulator, Graphic User Interface, Input Event Handler, Timer, and I/O Device Models. As Figure 5 shows, when Virtua

33、l ARM Platform is started, it initializes Graphic User Interface environment and displays the main GUI window on screen. Then Virtual ARM Simulator is executed, processing the instructions in the executable file

34、 and sending the results to Virtual ARM Platform. When Virtual ARM Platform gets the simulation results from Virtual ARM Simulator, it updates its GUI in cooperation with the execution report from Virtual ARM Simulat

35、or. When Input Event Handler detects any input events, it analyzes the event and terminates the program if the event is the termination event. If the event is not the termination event, the handler sends the processe

36、d input event to Virtual ARM Simulator, which simulates the instructions with the transferred input data. Authorized licensed use limited to: Zhengzhou University. Downloaded on February 25, 2009 at 05:15 from IEEE Xp