Checkpoint and Restore for SystemC models

We present preliminary work in the field of saving and restoring model state within a SystemC simulation environment. Save and restore (or checkpointing) is a useful technique that can greatly assist target software and simulation model development and debug. In contrast to other approaches that aim at saving and restoring the state of an entire simulation process, we investigate mechanisms by which only the essential simulation state is saved. This makes the checkpoints far more compact, and saved simulation states can be moved between host machines, and be used with updated or completely different simulation models. Our results indicate that SystemC models written to certain coding guidelines can be saved and restored reliably. As a result, virtual platforms and platform components written in SystemC can be made more useful to software developers, and support smarter workflows.