Virtual Development on Mixed Abstraction Levels: an Agricultural Vehicle Case Study
Matthias Jung, Songlin Piao, Thiyagarajan, Purusothaman, Xiao Pan, Thomas S. Kuhn, Christoph Grimm, Karsten Berns, Norbert Wehn · 2015
Virtual platforms are very fast, fully functional simulation models that resemble Hardware and Software parts of embedded systems. They include different components like processors, memories, IP blocks and interconnects. Virtual platforms significantly accelerate development cycles, because software can be developed before real hardware prototypes are available. In this paper, we extend this approach to the system level to enable evaluation of systemwide architecture decisions before hardware is available, and to support backtoback testing between architecture models and implementations. For this reason, we couple simulation models on different abstraction levels to provide tailored and realistic simulation environments. We demonstrate our approach with a smart farming application scenario: First, we simulate the system environment including, application behaviour, the tractor, and obstacles with high level models. We then replace the application behaviour with a SystemC/TLM model that provides low level ECU simulation and executes target code.