OHEX: OS-aware hybridization techniques for accelerating MPSoC full-system simulation

Virtual platform (VP) technology is an established enabler of embedded system design. However, the sheer number of CPU models in modern multi-core VPs forms a performance bottleneck. Hybrid simulation addresses this issue by executing parts of the embedded software stack on the host. Although the approach is significantly faster, hybridization can not cope with higher software layers, e.g., Operating Systems (OSs). Thus, this paper presents the OS-aware Host EXtension (OHEX) framework to accelerate VPs while expanding the applicability of hybridization. OHEX is evaluated on various system layers, yielding speedups between 2.99x-21.14x with specific benchmarks.