CRI: CI-P: Planning for an Innovative Dual-Path Computer Architecture Modeling Infrastructure for Highly Productive System Simulation and Emulation

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

A detailed architecture simulator is indispensable for computer architects. Unfortunately, today's fastest simulators do not provide desirable simulation throughput. The problem becomes even more serious when the target of a study is next-generation systems having hundreds of processor cores. The lack of a fast and versatile multicore system simulator will seriously hamper the productivity of researchers, as well as their capability to produce timely technical innovations. Moreover, existing teaching infrastructures are predominantly for outdated single-core systems. This project is for planning the submission of a CI proposal to create and deploy a very fast and versatile simulation and emulation infrastructure that can model and evaluate a large multicore processor system using realistic workloads. The proposed infrastructure focuses on the core components of architectural research in the multicore paradigm - the design of the memory hierarchy and interconnect. The PIs plan to integate developed high-speed trace-based software and FPGA-based simulation and emulation techniques that provide orders of magnitude speedup over conventional simulation techniques. The proposed novel dual-path approach is based on a common graphical interface that allows a user to easily and quickly specify an architecture configuration and test it using these trace-driven simulation techniques.