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Simulation engine

This page explains the internals of the simulation engine.

The simulation engine emulates an event-driven simulator (VHDL/Verilog like) by applying the following simulation loop on the top of the Verilator C++ simulation model:

../../_images/simEngine.png

At a low level, the simulation engine manages the following primitives:

  • Sensitive callbacks, which allow users to call a function on each simulation delta cycle.

  • Delayed callbacks, which allow users to call a function at a future simulation time.

  • Simulation threads, which allow users to describe concurrent processes.

  • Command buffer, which allows users to delay write access to the DUT until the end of the current delta cycle.

There are some practical uses of those primitives:

  • Sensitive callbacks can be used to wake up a simulation thread when a given condition happens, like a rising edge on a clock.

  • Delayed callbacks can be used to schedule stimuli, such as deasserting a reset after a given time, or toggling the clock.

  • Both sensitive and delayed callbacks can be used to resume a simulation thread.

  • A simulation thread can be used (for instance) to produce stimulus and check the DUT’s output values.

  • The command buffer’s purpose is mainly to avoid all concurrency issues between the DUT and the testbench.