FPGA-Accelerated Simulation Technologies (FAST): Fast, Full-System, Cycle-Accurate Simulators

This paper describes FAST, a novel simulation methodology that can produce simulators that (i) are orders of magnitude faster than comparable simulators, (ii) are cycleaccurate, (iii) model the entire system running unmodified applications and operating systems, (iv) provide visibility with minimal simulation performance impact and (v) are capable of running current instruction sets such as x86. It achieves its capabilities by partitioning simulators into a speculative functional model component that simulates the instruction set architecture and a timing model component that predicts performance. The speculative functional model enables the simulator to be parallelized, implementing the timing model in FPGA hardware for speed and the functional model using a modified full-system simulators. We currently achieve an average simulation speed of

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: MICRO
• Authors: Derek Chiou, Dam Sunwoo, Joonsoo Kim, Nikhil A. Patil, William H. Reinhart, Darrel Eric Johnson, Jebediah Keefe, Hari Angepat
• Keywords: Hardware, MICRO 2007, Model Component, Speculative Functional Model, Timing Model