Wind River Simics Full System Simulation

Wind River Simics is a full system simulator used by software developers to simulate any target hardware from a single processor to large, complex, and connected electronic systems. This simulation enables the target software (board support package, firmware, real-time operating system, middleware, and application) to run on a virtual platform the same way it does on the physical hardware.
This fast and accurate virtual environment enables engineering, integration, and test teams to adopt approaches and techniques that are simply not possible on physical hardware. For example, developers can freeze, save, email, and restore the whole system; they can view and modify every device, register, or memory location; and they can run the whole system in reverse to find the source of a bug.

Using Simics, companies can adopt new approaches to the product development life cycle, yielding dramatic reduction in project risks and development costs and improvement to both product quality and engineering efficiency.

Wind River Simics simulates the full system

Full System Simulation
Wind River Simics simulates much more than a single processor, system-on-chip (SoC), or board. It can simulate the entire system from a single platform all the way up to racks of platforms, with each running different operating systems on different processor architectures. This full system capability allows all developers, testers, and integrators to debug/test and integrate the system as a single unit rather than working with individual system pieces.

Wind River Simics simulates all hardware devices and runs the full, unmodified target software stack

The high fidelity of Simics virtual platforms allows them to run the entire software stack—from boot loaders to hypervisors to operating systems to applications. There is no need for stubbing or recompiling the target software to run in a simulator. Simics virtual platforms can run the same binaries that run on the physical hardware.

With Simics, real software loads run fast enough for everyday application-level analysis, testing, and debugging. Simics streamlines the finding of elusive bugs, with unique capabilities such as reverse execution, run-to-run repeatability, device inspection/control, and full system save/restore.

Simics provides visibility into any target device, register, memory location, or other state, regardless of whether it is visible to a JTAG port or an agent-based software debugger. Furthermore, it is possible to access these devices to inject faults into the system hardware during the testing process.

Simics virtual platforms are easily and quickly configurable. Compared to hardware, setting up a particular target system is much faster. Configurations of the virtual platform can be saved and accessed at a later point in time, making it very convenient for ensuring consistent hardware setups within a development organization and customer support situations. Simics also supports rapid prototyping and the ability to quickly determine the impact of a potential hardware change on software performance.

Simics Product Family
The Simics product family includes the following products:

• Wind River Simics Hindsight: Provides the user interface, the simulation framework for running system models, and Quick Start Virtual Platforms
• Wind River Simics Ethernet Networking: Allows network connections to be made between virtual boards and between virtual boards and a physical network
• Wind River Simics Accelerator: Increases performance of large multi-board simulations by distributing the simulation across multiple host CPU cores
• Wind River Simics Analyzer: Provides analysis capabilities of the entire product system, even if it is comprised of many boards, target architectures, and real-time operating systems (RTOSes)
• Wind River Simics Model Builder: Enables customers to build their own models of their target hardware
• Wind River Simics Extension Builder: Enables customers to extend, adapt, and customize the Simics framework for their particular workflow or needs
• Wind River Simics Virtual Platforms: Models the target hardware system, whether it is multi-core, multiprocessor, or multi-board