Function Lifetime Diagram

This repository contains a novel approach for early visualization of complex HW/SW interactions during SW development for embedded systems. The approach traces the lifetime of HW and SW functions during the simulation of a Virtual Prototype (VP), which represents the HW while executing the SW. The execution of the VP is dynamically instrumented at runtime such that neither the VP binary file nor the SW binary file has to be modified for tracing. The results are presented as a Function Lifetime Diagram (FLD) by storing the data into the Fast Transaction Recording (FTR) file format, which can be visualized, e.g. by the Surfer waveform viewer.

Prerequisites

• Working Python3 environment (including pyelftools, cbor2)
• DynamoRIO
• FTR Viewer (Surfer or alternative)
• RISC-V GNU Toolchain (multilib recommended)

Setup Env

1. Clone Relation Coverage repository

git clone https://github.com/ics-jku/function_lifetime_diagram.git
cd function_lifetime_diagram

2. Install packages and build RISCV-VP++ according to README within riscv-vp-plusplus folder

sudo apt install cmake autoconf automake autotools-dev curl libmpc-dev libmpfr-dev libgmp-dev gawk build-essential bison flex texinfo libgoogle-perftools-dev libtool patchutils bc zlib1g-dev libexpat-dev libboost-iostreams-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-log-dev qtbase5-dev qt5-qmake libvncserver-dev
cd riscv-vp-plusplus
make -j
cd ..

Don't forget to add the RISC-V VP++ bin folder to your $PATH

3. Install packages and build DynamoRIO

sudo apt install cmake g++ g++-multilib doxygen git zlib1g-dev libunwind-dev libsnappy-dev liblz4-dev libxxhash-dev
cd dynamorio
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j
cd ..

Don't forget to create the DynamoRIO bin folder to your $PATH and add the necessary environment variable:

export DynamoRIO_DIR=<BUILD_FOLDER>

4. Build Tracer Due to an issue in this version of DynamoRIO the path of the addresstable needs to be entered manually in the C Code. In the file /fld/tracer/tracer.c replace <FLD_FOLDER_PATH> with the path to the "fld" folder containing the python scripts and rename the file to "tracer.c".

cd fld/tracer
mkdir build
cmake ..
make
cd ../..

5. Build Examples For each of the examples you can run make to build it.

cd example/<EXAMPLE>
make
cd ..

When building the MNIST example you additionally have to compile the virtual environment for gd32 to run it later.

cd riscv-vp-plusplus/env/gd32/vp-breadboard
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make
cd ../../../../

6. Modify config files For each of the examples there is a config file template. Replace the <ENV_FOLDER> tag with your environment location. Rename the file by removing the "_template"

Run Example

Each example can be executed by running

cd fld
python3 FunctionLifetimeDiagram.py ../examples/config_<EXAMPLE>.cfg

To run the MNIST exmple, you first have to start the virtual environment for gd32.

./riscv-vp-plusplus/env/gd32/vp-breadboard/build/vp-breadboard

Boosting SW Development Efficiency with Function Lifetime Diagrams

Christoph Hazott and Daniel Große. Boosting SW Development Efficiency with Function Lifetime Diagrams. IEEE Symposium on Design and Diagnostics of Electronic Circuits and Systems (DDECS)

@inproceedings{HG:2025,
  author = {Christoph Hazott and Daniel Gro{\ss}e},
  title = {Boosting SW Development Efficiency with Function Lifetime Diagrams},
  booktitle = {IEEE Symposium on Design and Diagnostics of Electronic Circuits and Systems (DDECS)},
  year = 2025
}