Port Call Path Sensitive Conflict Analysis for Instance-Aware Parallel SystemC Simulation
Tim Schmidt, Zhongqi Cheng and Rainer Dömer
Center for Embedded Computer Systems University of California, Irvine, USA
ABSTRACT
Many parallel SystemC approaches expect a thread safe and conflict free model from the designer. Alternatively, an advanced compiler can identify and avoid possible parallel access conflicts. While manual conflict resolution can theoretically be more precise, it is impractical for real world applications because of the inherent complexities. Here automatic compilerbased analysis is preferred which provides conservative conflict avoidance with minimal false positives. This paper introduces a novel compiler technique called Port Call Path analysis that greatly reduces the amount of false positive conflicts resulting in significantly increased simulation speed. Experimental results show that the new analysis reduces the amount of false conflicts by up to 98% and, on a 4-core processor, speeds up the simulation up to 3x for a NoC particle simulator and 3.5x for a bitcoin miner SystemC model.
