Cycle-true simulation of the ST10 microcontroller including the core and the peripherals

With the rising complexity of electronic systems, containing more and more hardware and software parts, it becomes necessary to simulate simultaneously, hardware and software at whatever abstraction level. These simulation techniques, called cosimulation, require fast and flexible simulators. We introduce the elaboration of a microcontroller simulator including the core and the peripherals for an accurate hardware/software cosimulation at the clock-cycle level. It is our goal to have a simulator which is fast enough to simulate a few minutes of real time execution within a reasonable lapse of time. To be more precise, we deal with the realization of a simulator for the ST10 microcontroller and its integration into a co-simulation environment. We give our global approach and explain our techniques in detail. We also present new tracks to obtain improved performance with this kind of simulator.