gpsim

What

Screen Shots

Requirements

Download

gpsim

gpsim is a full-featured software simulator for Microchip PIC microcontrollers distributed under the GNU General Public License

gpsim has been designed to be as accurate as possible. Accuracy includes the entire PIC - from the core to the I/O pins and including ALL of the internal peripherals. Thus it's possible to create stimuli and tie them to the I/O pins and test the PIC the same PIC the same way you would in the real world.

gpsim has been designed to be as fast as possible. Real time simulation speeds of 20Mhz pics are possible. ( A 'goto $' program runs at the same speed as a 25Mhz pic when simulated on my 400Mhz PII Linux Box. Of course, as you add stimuli and begin interacting with peripherals, the performance drops. But it's still fast!)

gpsim has been designed to be as useful as possible. (At least that's the intent - honest.) The standard simulation paradigm including breakpoints, single stepping, disassembling, memory inspect & change, and so on has been implemented. In addition, gpsim supports many debugging features that are only available with in-circuit emulators. For example, a continuous trace buffer tracks every action of the simulator (whether you want it or not). Also, it's possible to set read and write break points on values (e.g. break if a specific value is read from or written to a register).

gpsim is not^B^B^B fancy, but^B^B^Band it's improving. It supports a good ol' fashioned CLI like gdb and a gui based on gtk.

Screen Shots

Scope viewer 1. Scope viewer 2.

Desktop1 and Desktop2 in tiff format (for MP). Shows many of the gpsim windows on my desktop.

You may wish to also check out Andy Burgess' java wrapper. However, it's getting to be a little outdated now.

System Requirements

Linux or Windows

Downloading

Starting with version 0.21.11, gpsim will now be distributed through SourceForge

Linux

Don't forget the latest version of the gnupic assembler .

Here are a few notes from the gnupic mailing list about installing gtk+extra from the tar file.

Windows

Borut Razem has ported gpsim to Windows and called the package " gpsimWin32". In addition, he's created a slick installer and makes regular snap shots.

CVS

The gpsim source is on the gpsim SourceForge page. From there you may browse the CVS and check out the very latest versions. The instructions for getting gpsim from CVS provide a step-by-step description on how you can get the code.

Installing

Down load the gpsim tar ball and type

tar -xvzf gpsim-0.x.y.tar.gz

Where 'x.y' is the version number. This will create a subdirectory called gpsim-0.x.y . All of gpsim's source code will be untarred to here. From there, you can read the README and INSTALL files for more info. But they basically tell you to

cd gpsim-0.x.y

./configure This will create the Makefile

make <--- This will create the executable

su root if you have root privileges

make install places a copy of the executable in /usr/local/bin

Oh, don't forget to check the gpsim-0.x.y/examples subdirectory for some example asm and stimulus files...

Supported Processors

PIC12C508	PIC12C509	PIC16C54	PIC16C55
PIC16C61	PIC16C62	PIC16C63	PIC16C64*
PIC16F627	PIC16F628
PIC16C65*	PIC16C71	PIC16C72*	PIC16C73*
PIC16c712	PIC16C716
PIC16C74*	PIC16C84	PIC16CR83	PIC16F83
PIC16CR84	PIC16F84	PIC16F873*	PIC16F874*
PIC16F877*
PIC17C752*	PIC17C756*	PIC17C762*	PIC17C766*
PIC18C242*	PIC18C252*	PIC18C442*	PIC18C452*
PIC18F442*	PIC18F452*

* Not fully supported (yet).

Documentation

Here's the beginning of gpsim.ps and gpsim.pdf, the gpsim documentation.

Or if you perfer, here's the Lyx source gpsim.lyx.

Support

There are two mailing lists where support for gpsim is discussed. The gpsim-devel is devoted to gpsim specific issues. While primarily intended for gpsim development, this list may also be used as a user resource to ask any question. The other list where gpsim is discussed is GNUPIC mailing list. The GNUPIC project is devoted to Open Source tools for Microchip PICs.

Modules

gpsim supports loadable modules. This means that it is is possible to add devices to gpsim that are totally separate from gpsim. They reside in their own libraries and are distributed separately. The goal, of course, is to provide the simulation infrastructure for users to easily construct a custom simulation environment.

gpsim provides a basic module library with the following components:

Pullup/Pulldown resistors
USART
switch
AND, OR, XOR, and NOT Logic Gates
Single or 7-segment LEDs
PAL Video emulator
Rotary Encoder

The gpsim LCD module provides support for character LCD displays.