Software rules the day in multicore SoC design

New methodologies and tools are emerging for the application of software development processes in designing multicore system-on-chip (SoC) architecture designs. These methodologies and tools can help SoC designers in ensuring that their parallelized code is unable to cause memory-access problems, race conditions, or other faults that crash processors, or entire systems. Virtual platform technologies can significantly help designers in overcoming the challenges associated with designing multicore SoC architectures. The process of assembling a virtual platform from hardware models addresses many of the issues concerning software debugging in SoC architectures. This process also helps the designer in gaining significant control over the system, enabling system configuration to be varied according to number and speed of cores and software loads.