Embedded processors are now widely used in system-on-chips. The computational power of such processors and their ease of access to/from other embedded cores can be utilized to test SoCs. This paper presents a software-based testing of embedded cores in a system chip using the embedded processor We present a methodology to systematically generate test programs that test the processor and other cores in system chip. The method requires almost no overhead but provides great flexibility in terms of structural/fault coverage, test mechanism and future reuse.