Consolidate the capabilities of the socrocket Virtual Platform and illustrate the advantages when applied to hardware/software co-design with a running demonstrator and usage guidelines.

 

Hardware/software (HW/SW) co-design refers to the simultaneous consideration of hardware and software within the design process, employing tools such as virtual platforms. A Virtual Platform is a software based system that can fully mirror the functionality of a target System-on-Chip (soc) or board, combining high-speed processor simulators and high-level, fully functional models of the hardware building blocks, to provide an abstract, executable representation of the hardware to software developers and to system architects.

Virtual Platforms enable early software development, efficient software and hardware partitioning, and determinism, which is essential to fully exploit the capabilities and develop software tool chains for complex many/multi-core and heterogeneous processors, such as: Graphic Processing Unit for space, LEON-based multi-core, BRAVE NG-ULTRA/DAHLIA... An example of application is the evaluation of the TASTE software development environments, and its application to the a virtual implementation of the Compact Reconfigurable Avionics (cora - TSS18-02SWE, T701-504ED) Use Cases.

 

ESA has promoted the development of the socrocket Virtual Platform, which has been made available to missions and projects. This platform is comprised by several functional blocks, and can be used to simulate a System-on-Chip.

 

The main tasks to be accomplished are:

- Develop and integrate new functional blocks in the Virtual Platform, representative of future processors and accelerators (Digital Signal Processor, spacefibre, RISC-V and ARM processor).

- Validate the socrocket Virtual Platform and enhance its infrastructure.

- Develop demonstrator, in which the advantages of making use of a virtual platform for hw/sw co-design systems can be quantified. Candidate applications are: on-board data processing, GNSS receiver, AOCS, cora Use Cases.

- Improve the usability of the platform, implementing a user friendly front-end, generating additional documentation, guidelines and user manuals.

 

There is no software clause because socrocket is distributed under the Affero GPL. The improved socrocket Virtual Platform and the documentation and hardware models resulting from this activity will be made available by ESA to the whole European space industry.