Minimally Invasive HW/SW Co-debug Live Visualization on Architecture Level

ABSTRACTWe present a tool that allows developers to debug hard- and software and their interaction in an early design stage. We combine a SystemC virtual prototype (VP) with an easily configurable and interactive graphical user interface and a standard software debugger. The graphical user interface visualizes the internal state of the hardware. At the same time, the software debugger monitors and allows to manipulate the state of the software. This co-visualization supports design understanding and live debugging of the HW/SW interaction. We demonstrate its usefulness with a case-study where we debug an OLED display driver running on a RISC-V VP.