Mitigating Electronic Parts Obsolescence Using Hardware/Software Co-simulation Tools

Abstract
Military grade electronic parts are no longer readily available and weapon system suppliers have been forced to replace these parts with commercial grade parts that often times have very short product life times. This has caused a tremendous parts obsolescence problem for the supplier of electronic assemblies for military applications. Weapon system design and support costs have dramatically skyrocketed as a result and are a particular problem when the electronic assembly also contains software or firmware. When microprocessors or other devices that require software or firmware become obsolete, large redevelopment costs are often incurred to replace the parts. Software and firmware often requires major redevelopment costs to facilitate the replaced hardware part.

Software and Hardware Co-development tools can permit re-engineering cost savings when extensive software and firmware is involved. The Affordable Multi-Missile (AM3) Program sponsored by the Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM) sponsored an Affordable Digital Signal Processors (ADSP) initiative to develop and demonstrate a method of mitigating obsolescence costs for processor based electronics design. This paper addresses the program approach and results of this demonstration, which includes modeling the hardware, software and firmware for an actual tactical missile guidance computer. This effort included a short schedule to develop a hardware/software co-simulation environment implementing a processor model of a PowerPC using the SystemC™ features of the Synpsys Co-Centric® System Studio. As part of the model, a Motorola instruction set simulator was interfaced with a Synopsys Bus Functional Model (BFM) to create a pin-level simulation model of the processor as part of the overall guidance computer model.

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