Software and System Development using Virtual Platforms: Full-System Simulation with Wind River Simics

Attempting to simulate the particular fault and the particular detection mechanism is perhaps even more advanced and likewise hazards having to incorporate a number of low-level implementation info. for instance, an error-correcting code (ECC) reminiscence blunders is admittedly now not a topic of studying undesirable values from reminiscence, yet relatively of the reminiscence controller detecting that a few piece of reminiscence has long gone undesirable by means of evaluating its values with the invisible ECC information kept along it. the results of this type of detection is to elevate an mistakes exception with the accountable processor center, and environment error-reporting registers to values describing the character of the mistake and the place it happened. The exception reasons a bounce to the OS errors handler or the BIOS process administration interrupt (SMI) handler, in an effort to then continue to diagnose and document the mistake. The attention-grabbing habit is to determine what the mistake handler does whilst the mistake is detected, to not really signify the defective worth in reminiscence and simulate the reminiscence ECC mechanism and additional bits. Communications buses and networks may wish to be prolonged to incorporate errors states, in order that endpoint units can certainly discover that facts has been corrupted in transmission. for instance, Ethernet community simulations supply the power to examine and optionally drop and adjust packets in flight, as mentioned in bankruptcy five. to use such mechanisms, it is often essential to write a customized Simics fault-injection module, as mentioned in Chapters five and eight. 89 90 bankruptcy three advance and debug software program on Simics (normal info move) Processor reminiscence map Serial machine Console, serial hyperlink, … Fault-injection module determine three. 12 Serial intercept. whilst facts is flowing throughout Simics interfaces like serial, I2C, SPI, MDIO, and customized interfaces among heavily coupled devices, an easy implementation is to place a fault-injection module into the knowledge stream. As proven in determine three. 12, this module replaces the direct connection among units, forwarding information and corrupting it whilst applicable. No switch is required to the hooked up units, other than updating the process configuration in order that either one of them element to the fault-injection module instead of on to one another. on the approach point, faults will be injected by means of preventing processors and disconnecting networks to make whole subsystems, forums, or machines turn into unresponsive. trying out method restoration mechanisms and high-level fault-detection mechanisms is de facto a reasonably universal use for Simics. Injecting error right into a digital platform doesn't must be rocket technology, however it definitely does require a few consciousness to element to ensure proper errors states are modeled in a manner that makes them amenable to fault injection. For trustworthy structures, trying out blunders dealing with is critical, and a digital platform is a handy gizmo for doing it in an inexpensive and nondestructive means. See bankruptcy eight for extra on how fault injection may be applied utilizing Simics extensions. REAL-WORLD tale: fast CARD switch At one element within the historical past of Simics, we equipped a version of a customized process the place a consumer might take interface playing cards out and switch in new ones in a number of card slots.