Embedded Software for SoC - Grupo de Mecatrônica EESC/USP

108 Chapter 8
A modem (HW) which emulates the transaction to emit the encoded picture
and receive a picture accordingly to a baud rate.
A video card which combines both pictures and synchronize with a GUI
posix thread tracing the images.
A keyboard to activate the flows and switch between simple and double
display.
The tool generates code for the accesses to the bus and a skeleton of module
to be completed with the operation implementation. Then everything is
compiled and linked to obtain a simulator of the platform. The simulator can
be launched as a self standing simulator like a classical SystemC2.0 program,
or one may use the VISTA tool to control and monitor the execution of the
simulation (step by step, continuous, pause, resume).
The tool also allows to drag observable variables to an oscilloscope which
displays their states. These variables are figured like kind of output ports in
the tool. The tool can interact with the simulation to change some settings of
the system for analysis purpose. Some configuration variables can be introduced
in a system model. They are figured like kind of inputs ports. These
observable and configuration variables are provided with the vista library:
there are no signals at the transactional level of abstraction.
VISTA embeds a protocol which allows to run the monitoring and the
simulator tools on two different hosts. It even allows to monitor SystemC
programs without having modeled them with the tool. Using these vista variables
allows to drive an analysis session illustrated in Figure 8-10. For
example, one may think of increasing or decreasing the baud rate of the