Microprocessor soft cores offer today an effective solution to the problem of rapidly developing new system-on-a-chips. However, all the features they offer are rarely used in embedded applications, and thus designers are often involved in the challenging task of soft-core customization to obtain application-specific processors. This paper proposes a novel approach to help designers in the simulation-based validation of application-specific processors. Suitable input stimuli are automatically generated while reasoning only on the software application the processor is intended to execute, while all the details concerning the processor hardware are neglected. Experimental results on a 8051 soft core show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
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