Simulation Of Embedded System Based On ARM Cortex-M3

Now, embedded system and software are facing a decrease of product life. Which caused a reduced developing life cycle, requests the developers develop a more complex chip and software in a shorter time. To solve this problem, simulator of embedded system gradually becomes an essential tool in new programmable architecture. The kernel of embedded system simulator is the instruction set simulation (ISS), for the poor performance of generally used interpreted simulator, people began a research of compiled simulator years ago. But with the limitation of complie technique, it never popularized in business products.The new Cortex-M3 series chips developed by ARM in 2006 are applied spread in some fields such as wireless sensor network. This paper designed a simulator for the embedded system based on ARM Cortex-M3 chip, made the Thumb-2 instruction set , which used by ARM Cortex-M3, as the target instruction set, designed a optimized interpreted instruction set simulator.Firstly, we introduced the program model of Thumb-2 instruction set, including the mode of the processor, registers and memory.Secondly, we designed the simulator platform. During the set up process of the platform, we designed the simulator including the advantages of both the speed of compiling technique and the flexibility of interpreted technique; described the architecture of Thumb-2 instruction set; implemented the interface of memory, to satisfy the access request of target instruction set; introduced the ELF file format, designed a loader to load the instructions and data into the memory of the simulator.At the end of this paper, we take an embedded system about robot car as an example to validate the function of simulator.