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Article . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
ZENODO
Article . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
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A Framework for Automated Integration of High-Level Simulators in RISC-V SoCs

Authors: Ramalho, Pedro; Paulino, Nuno; Bispo, João;

A Framework for Automated Integration of High-Level Simulators in RISC-V SoCs

Abstract

To achieve further performance and efficiency, System-on-Chip (SoC) designs increasingly rely on core customization or integration of application-specific hardware blocks. This requires extensive efforts during Design Space Exploration (DSE) of new hardware to achieve integration, correctness, and target performance. This is time-consuming and error-prone, hindering fast iterative hardware/software co-design. This paper presents a co-simulation framework which integrates arbitrary high-level simulators into Verilog-based SoC platforms, demonstrated on the RISC-V–based open-source X-HEEP SoC. Using inter-process communication we enable cycle-accurate lock-step co-simulation where high-level simulators of accelerators are exposed as memory-mapped peripherals to the RISC-V core. For experimental validation we re-implemented an existing peripheral of the X-HEEP SoC written in Register-Transfer Level (RTL) as an external simulator process, and observed that the cosimulated version maintains identical cycle-level behavior with a maximum wall-clock overhead of 11 %. This work enables fast DSEs of heterogeneous RISC-V–based SoCs.

Keywords

Hardware Acceleration, Co-Simulation, RISC-V

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average
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