simulator is really cycle accurate?

Jogging Song

Intellectual 685 points

Hi, all

Nowadays I need optimze some functions to improve performance after runnint the programming

successfully on the EVM. After reading the documents, I learn that I have to use simulators in order to

profiling the program. Indeed the simulator is very slow. It is the first time that a simulator can be cycle

accurate. From my experience of DSPs from other vendors, a simulator can only count cycles, and can't

simulate the memory. Can anyone tell me more about how simulators can be cycle accurate. other I will

doubt whether the result is cycle accurate.

Thanks

Jogging

over 17 years ago

0 Brad Griffis over 17 years ago

TI__Guru*** 125430 points

It can simulate the internal memory, including cache hits and misses. I don't think it simulates external memory, though admittedly I don't use the simulators often.

0 Jogging Song over 17 years ago in reply to Brad Griffis

Intellectual 685 points

I do initial optimization on the development board. Now I want to know the cache use.

It seems I have to use a simulator. But it is very time -cousuming.

I hope TI can improve its on-chip profile function.

Best Regards

Jogging

0 Anuradha Krishnan over 17 years ago in reply to Jogging Song

TI__Intellectual 755 points

Hi Jogging,

Which device in particular are you interested in? We have highly cycle accurate device simulators for various C64x+ based devices. We also have the CPU only and Megamodule only Cycle accurate simulators.

The C64x+ simulators provide the following cache event counts:

L1D & L2P hits, missess, conflict missess, L2 hits, missess & conflict misses, L1D, L1P and L2 SRAM accesses; snoops, victims...

You can get the above counts in both the CCS function profiler and through the Analysis Toolkit Code Coverage and Multi-event Profiler tool.

I would be happy to help.

Regards,

Anuradha.

0 Jogging Song over 17 years ago in reply to Anuradha Krishnan

Intellectual 685 points

Hi, Anuradha

Nowadays the device i am using is DM6437. I am developing image processing application on DM6437.

After inital optimization, I hope to further optimize the algorithms. But the simulator is slow.

I hope TI could put an on-chip profiling module like another DSP vendor. Then TI's DSP will be more

cool.

Best Regards

Jogging

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simulator is really cycle accurate?