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The Liberty Simulation Environment: A Deliberate Approach to
High-Level System Modeling [abstract] (PDF)
Manish Vachharajani, Neil Vachharajani, David A. Penry, Jason A. Blome, Sharad Malik, and David I. August
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), Volume 24, Number 3, August 2006.
In digital hardware system design, the quality of the product is
directly related to the number of meaningful design alternatives
properly considered. Unfortunately, existing modeling methodologies
and tools have properties which make them less than ideal for rapid
and accurate design-space exploration. This article identifies and
evaluates the shortcomings of existing methods to motivate the Liberty
Simulation Environment (LSE). LSE is a high-level modeling tool
engineered to address these limitations, allowing for the rapid
construction of accurate high-level simulation models. LSE simplifies
model specification with low-overhead component-based reuse techniques
and an abstraction for timing control. As part of a detailed
description of LSE, this article presents these features, their impact
on model specification effort, their implementation, and optimizations
created to mitigate their otherwise deleterious impact on simulator
execution performance.
