SW-VHDL Co-Verification Environment Using Open Source Tools

Abstract

The verification of complex digital designs often involves the use of expensive simulators. The present paper proposes an approach to verify a specific family of complex hardware/software systems, whose hardware part, running on an FPGA, communicates with a software counterpart executed on an external processor, such as a user/operator software running on an external PC. The hardware is described in VHDL and the software may be described in any computer language that can be interpreted or compiled into a (Linux) executable file. The presented approach uses open source tools, avoiding expensive license costs and usage restrictions.