The MULTICUBE Design Flow - Multi-objective Design Space Exploration of Multiprocessor SoC Architectures - page 12

process. The above interaction has been addressed by creating a specification based
on an XML based grammar for writing both the design space definition file and the
simulator interface files. The grammar is defined by using the XSD schema language.

1.3.1 Design Space Definition

The definition of the design space is done by using an XML file that is composed
of a preamble, which defines the name-space and supported version. The current
release of the MULTICUBE XML interface specification is R1.4 and it is available
on MULTICUBE web page (www.multicube.eu).
1 <? xml version= "1.0" encoding= "UTF-8" ?>
2 < design_space xmlns= "http://www.multicube.eu/" version= "1.4" >
3 < simulator > ... </ simulator >
4 < parameters > ... </ parameters >
5 < system_metrics > ... </ system_metrics >
6 < rules > ... </ rules >
7 </ design_space >
The remaining part of the file describes the simulator invocation method ( < simulator >
tag), the set of parameters of the simulator which can be configured ( < parameters >
tag), the system metrics which can be estimated by the simulator ( < system_metrics >
tag) and the rules which have to be taken into account by the exploration engine to
generate the feasible configurations.

1.3.1.1 Simulator Invocation

The < simulator_executable > marker is used for specifying the complete path name
of the executable:
1

< simulator >

2

< simulator_executable path= "/path/my_simulator_executable" />

3

</ simulator >

1.3.1.2 Parameters Definition

The < parameters > tag is used by the use case and simulator provider to specify the
names, the types and the ranges of the parameters that can be explored by the DSE
tool. The section contains a list of < parameter > markers:
1

< parameter >

2

< parameter name= "il1_cache_block_size_bytes"

3

description= "..." type= "exp2" min= "8" max= "64" />

4

< parameter name= "bpred" description= "b.p. type" type= "string" >

5

< item value= "nottaken" />

6

< item value= "taken" />

7

< item value= "perfect" />

8

< item value= "bimod" />