Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Dave Von Bank

Joshua D Levine

Neeti Khullar Bhatnagar

Andrew Robert Wilmot

William W LaRue, Jr

Aspects of the present invention describe a system and method for providing a single integrated simulation interface running in a single host operating system (OS) thread to observe and control multiple, disparate software and hardware components. Control mechanisms of the present invention provide access to each of the modeled components, including the hardware models, the embedded software components modeled on the bare-hardware elements, and the software applications, processes and threads which are themselves running on embedded software.

Simulation observability and control of all hardware and software components of a virtual platform model of an electronics system

Aspects of the present invention provide a system and method for a user of an event-driven simulator to specify breakpoint conditions in kernel modules, startup processes, shared libraries, and other automatically loaded software elements before the target environment is initialized. The virtual platform detects specified breakpoints when a file is loaded onto a virtual platform debugger during startup of the environment or initialization of the relevant processes. The virtual platform debugger may scan for specified breakpoints in all loaded source code files, in only those source code files that are automatically loaded, or in only those source code files specified by the designer as modified.

Method for setting breakpoints in automatically loaded software

Aspects of the present invention provide a system and method for a user of an event-driven simulator to specify complex breakpoint conditions and actions which allow both hardware and software states to be accessed. In a virtual platform modeling hardware components, bare-metal software programs, and high-level software applications or processes, a global identifier may be used to unambiguously identify each element, object, and subcomponent of the modeled system. The unambiguous global identifier may include an instance name and a hierarchical path name. A state of a specific element, object, or modeled component may trigger a breakpoint or be utilized or set as part of a breakpoint condition.

Aspects of the present invention describe a system and method for a user of an event-driven simulation environment and/or embedded software debugger interface to step through the source code of components modeled by the environment/debugger, including the embedded software or hardware model source code. In a virtual platform modeling hardware components, bare-metal software programs, and high-level software applications or processes, the source code of each modeled component may be stepped through during simulation. Insertion points for breakpoints or watchpoints may be detected during a traversal of the source code of each component being modeled in the virtual platform and such breakpoints inserted automatically.

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Rogers, MN, United States of America

Dave Von Bank