Towards Non-Intrusive SystemC Checkpointing for Digital Virtual Prototypes

Inhalt:
Checkpointing enables the storage and restoration of the simulation state of Virtual Protypes (VPs), significantly reducing the debugging and testing cycle times, thereby accelerating the overall development process. In this work, we present a novel methodology for checkpointing digital SystemC VPs, with a particular focus on storing and restoring SC_THREAD processes, which are integral to SystemC models. The proposed checkpointing methodology is non-intrusive to the SystemC kernel and is implemented as a SystemC library, which integrates seamlessly with existing digital VPs with minimal effort. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through a case study on a digital Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter. The filter’s state was successfully restored from a checkpoint, and its execution was validated to be consistent with the filter’s expected behavior. The results confirm that the proposed checkpointing library reliably restores the simulation state of digital VPs, enabling faster design iterations.