A Dynamic Linking Framework for Efficient QEMU Peripheral Development and Maintenance

When developing a new system, preliminary verification can be performed using an emulator before actual hardware production. Among the emulators needed in the development process, QEMU is the most well-known. Although defining and implementing a new peripheral's operation can be challenging, in this paper, we propose using dynamic linking to implement the peripheral's operation conveniently. Specifically, by connecting a separate program called NeuroSim to QEMU through dynamic linking, we can emulate a system in which a separate accelerator is connected to the MCU. Moreover, when expanding QEMU in this way, even if modifications to the peripheral's operation are required, it is better in terms of time and convenience because only the shared object file needs to be compiled without rebuilding the entire QEMU. Our study demonstrates that building with dynamic linking resulted in a reduction of approximately 91% in time compared to the build process without dynamic linking.