Accelerated hardware emulation environment for processor-based systems

An hardware emulation environment to emulate an integrated circuit design, comprising:

• a processor coupled to an address and data bus;
• a hardware emulator used to emulate the integrated circuit design coupled to the address and data bus;
• at least first and second clocks running at different frequencies;
• a dedicated resource positioned outside of the programmable resources of the hardware emulator and coupled to the address and data bus;
• and
• a switch coupled to the first and second clocks, the dedicated resource, and coupled to the address and data bus between the processor and the hardware emulator, the switch connected to either couple in a first mode of operation the first clock to the processor and couple the processor to the hardware emulator via the address and data bus, or, instead, couple in a second mode of operation the second clock to the processor and couple the processor to the dedicated resource via the address and data bus.

A method of emulating a design of an integrated circuit, comprising:

• loading at least part of the design into the hardware emulator;
• configuring a memory map wherein a first section of the memory map accesses resources on the hardware emulator and a second section of the memory map accesses resources on a processor board;
• in a first mode of operation, clocking the processor board and the emulator using a first clock frequency;
• monitoring a communication to access a dedicated resource modelling a function mapped to a memory address;
• and
• if the memory address is within the second section of the memory map, switching to a second mode of operation wherein the processor board is clocked at a second clock frequency, faster than the first clock frequency.

A hardware emulation environment for emulating a design of an integrated circuit, comprising:

• a hardware emulator having an emulator clock;
• a processor located on a processor board coupled to the hardware emulator having a processor clock, faster than the emulator clock;
• a bus coupling together the hardware emulator and the processor;
• at least two components having a same functionality and a same physical address, one of the components within the emulator and other of the components located on the processor board;
• and
• a switch coupled between the processor and the emulator that switches the bus routing and clocking to switch the processor from accessing the component on the emulator using the emulator clock to accessing the component on the processor board using the processor clock.