本篇論文提出一套能進行軟硬體協同設計的系統模擬平台。此平台結合虛擬機器與電子系統層級的開發軟體，使設計人員能夠以電子系統層級的方式來開發嵌入式ARM系統，與桌上型系統的PCI介面硬體，並且執行Linux作業系統。設計人員也能夠在硬體開發的初期，開發硬體的驅動程式與應用程式，並進一步評估系統的效能。

我們利用此平台實現兩種不同型式的系統。第一種系統是實現一個卸載複雜運算的嵌入式ARM環境，以MD5為範例進行。第二種系統是在桌上型環境中，將網路協定卸載於硬體以建構高速網路的環境。設計有效率的網路卸載環境是相當複雜的議題，其牽涉到硬體架構設計，以及硬體、驅動程式與作業系統之間的溝通機制。因此我們先對網路傳輸與接收的流程進行完整的分析，並提出以及實作一套與作業系統的溝通機制。接著整合網路卸載引擎與驅動程式，並將系統連結到真實的網路環境。最後建立一個網路的應用，以SCTP的協定執行一套FTP軟體。

A full system simulation platform is proposed in this thesis. The platform is designed by combining a virtual machine and an electronic system level integrated development environment. Through this platform, we can design a hardware system in an ARM environment or a PCI card in an x86 environment at the electronic system level, boot and run a Linux operating system, and design device drivers and applications as soon as a prototype in hardware is designed. We can also analyze the system performance at a relatively early stage.

We have made two case studies with this platform. First, we have offloaded the design of MD5, which is a complex and computational intensive operation in IPsec, in hardware, and designed a device driver, as well as an application to use this hardware. Second, we have developed a network offload environment with this platform. Since developing an efficient network offload environment is a relatively complicated issue, which is related to both the hardware architecture and the kernel communication mechanism between the device driver and the hardware, a complete analysis on the network flow is made, and a communication mechanism is proposed and implemented. We integrated the network offload engine and the device driver, and developed a network example that connects the real world network to our platform, running an FTP application using SCTP protocol.

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