Simulating the XMEGA Target Code

This page describes how to simulate the XMEGA target code in order to determine the length of time AES takes. This was designed for the CHES CTF 2016, but may be valuable in other circumstances.

Required Tools

You will require the following tools:

• Atmel Studio 7
• avr-gcc (suggested to use WinAVR, but you can actually build with Atmel Studio)

Simulating

The following assumes you have an EXTERNAL build environment (such as WinAVR, or avr-gcc). If you'd like to use Atmel Studio to build the project, see instructions at the end of this page.

Opening Object File

To begin, we'll be opening the existing .elf file. This file contains all the debug information created during the build process.

From the File --> Open menu, select Open Object File For Debugging:

Simulating

Timing

Building