TABLE OF CONTENTS Although the two lower-level software families i.e. device drivers and OS/Firmware bring interesting results, the ultimate goal of software developers is to get the final application running on TLM platforms as soon as possible. This high level is probably the easiest to set up on TLM platforms because it has very little or no relationship with the actual hardware programming.
Building and running a complete application on TLM platforms is an ambitious objective to achieve. In common practices, applications normally run on a prototype of hardware board whose central SoC is only a part of the board. Today, the implementation cost of hardware prototypes is skyrocketing due to the explosive SoC complexity. Running applications on a much more complete platform like TLM is therefore getting increasingly attractive for SoC developers. The TLM platform is not only a hardware platform that is accurate enough and available significantly earlier, but it is also able to easily outperform the equivalent RTL platform.
By running the critical software parts interacting frequently with the lower-level software, software developers should gain enough confidence that the application is ready to be integrated as soon as the prototype of the final platform is available. The critical software parts already layered and packaged as independent libraries such as protocol stacks, data stream decoders, all sorts of data filters, graphical environments are among the most essential parts to be verified in this manner.
