Design Article
Software testing for safety-critical automotive systems
By Victor Reyes, Synopsys
12/17/2012 7:30 PM EST
Virtual prototyping
A virtual prototype is a software model that emulates the hardware. Design teams can use a virtual prototype to model the digital aspects of a microcontroller unit, an electronic control unit or even a complete ECU network, and run the simulation on a desktop PC. Virtual prototypes run the same binary software as the real hardware. Because the virtual prototype is a soft model, software teams can get access to it months before the actual hardware device is available.
Virtual prototypes give development teams more than just software models for simulating the hardware; they are environments that allow them to debug and analyze hardware/software interactions. They also offer full visibility of the internal and external registers and signals, provide full control over program execution, and are completely non-intrusive.
Engineers can use virtual prototypes to freeze the full system execution at any point in time (even with multi-core hardware) and read and modify internal values. They can also use advanced analysis features to correlate software (at the application level) with hardware events, measure code coverage, apply fault injection, and use scripts to automate the simulations.
Virtual prototypes integrate seamlessly into existing software tool chains and connect to external third-party tools for hardware-in-the-loop and rest-of-bus complete simulations.
Teams can easily deploy and scale simulation models. Virtual prototypes are easy to share, archive and deploy across a worldwide organization.
Fault injection using virtual prototyping technology
Virtual prototypes enable users to access all the internal hardware elements of a design – memory content, registers, signals – as well as specific, fault-tolerant mechanisms, like error correction codes (ECC) on memories, assuming, of course, that those features have been modeled. Users can create virtual prototype models without much effort by mirroring the functionality of the block at a more abstract level.
Virtual prototypes can model both transient and permanent faults. Users can inject faults through mechanisms on the simulation framework, without having to modify the embedded software models. They can also visualize and trace all hardware and software events that have been modeled on the systems. Visualization tools present both hardware and software execution and events on the same windows using the same timeline, which allows users to correlate them and see the cause-and-effect of a fault.
A virtual prototype is a software model that emulates the hardware. Design teams can use a virtual prototype to model the digital aspects of a microcontroller unit, an electronic control unit or even a complete ECU network, and run the simulation on a desktop PC. Virtual prototypes run the same binary software as the real hardware. Because the virtual prototype is a soft model, software teams can get access to it months before the actual hardware device is available.
Virtual prototypes give development teams more than just software models for simulating the hardware; they are environments that allow them to debug and analyze hardware/software interactions. They also offer full visibility of the internal and external registers and signals, provide full control over program execution, and are completely non-intrusive.
Engineers can use virtual prototypes to freeze the full system execution at any point in time (even with multi-core hardware) and read and modify internal values. They can also use advanced analysis features to correlate software (at the application level) with hardware events, measure code coverage, apply fault injection, and use scripts to automate the simulations.
Virtual prototypes integrate seamlessly into existing software tool chains and connect to external third-party tools for hardware-in-the-loop and rest-of-bus complete simulations.
Teams can easily deploy and scale simulation models. Virtual prototypes are easy to share, archive and deploy across a worldwide organization.
Fault injection using virtual prototyping technology
Virtual prototypes enable users to access all the internal hardware elements of a design – memory content, registers, signals – as well as specific, fault-tolerant mechanisms, like error correction codes (ECC) on memories, assuming, of course, that those features have been modeled. Users can create virtual prototype models without much effort by mirroring the functionality of the block at a more abstract level.
Virtual prototypes can model both transient and permanent faults. Users can inject faults through mechanisms on the simulation framework, without having to modify the embedded software models. They can also visualize and trace all hardware and software events that have been modeled on the systems. Visualization tools present both hardware and software execution and events on the same windows using the same timeline, which allows users to correlate them and see the cause-and-effect of a fault.
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