Easy and structured approach for software and firmware co-simulation for bus centric designs

Although software and firmware co-simulation is gaining popularity, it is still not widely used in the FPGA designs. This work presents easy and structured approach for software and firmware co-simulation for bus centric designs. The proposed approach is very modular and software language agnostic. The only requirement is that the firmware design is accessible via some kind of system bus. The concept has been used for testing DAQ system being developed for high energy physics experiment.