An open-source binary utility generator
Alexandro Baldassin, Paulo Cesar Centoducatte, Sandro José Rigo, Daniel C. Casarotto, Luiz C. V. dos Santos, Max R. de O. Schultz, Olinto José Varela Furtado · ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems · 2008
Electronic system level (ESL) modeling allows early hardware-dependent software (HDS) development. Due to broad CPU diversity and shrinking time-to-market, HDS development can neither rely on hand-retargeting binary tools, nor can it rely on pre-existent tools within standard packages. As a consequence, binary utilities which can be easily adapted to new CPU targets are of increasing interest. We present in this article a framework for automatic generation of binary utilities. It relies on two innovative ideas: platform-aware modeling and more inclusive relocation handling. Generated assemblers, linkers, disassemblers and debuggers were validated for MIPS, SPARC, PowerPC, i8051 and PIC16F84. An open-source prototype generator is available for download.