Structured computer organization (3rd ed.)
Structured computer organization (3rd ed.)
Using the SimOS machine simulator to study complex computer systems
ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS)
Computer organization and design (2nd ed.): the hardware/software interface
Computer organization and design (2nd ed.): the hardware/software interface
Computer architecture (2nd ed.): a quantitative approach
Computer architecture (2nd ed.): a quantitative approach
Introduction to Computing Systems: From Bits and Gates to C and Beyond
Introduction to Computing Systems: From Bits and Gates to C and Beyond
ACE '07 Proceedings of the ninth Australasian conference on Computing education - Volume 66
A full system x86 simulator for teaching computer organization
Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Performance and power evaluation of an intelligently adaptive data cache
HiPC'05 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on High Performance Computing
Emumaker86: a hardware simulator for teaching CPU design
Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
Modern processors increase their performance with complex microarchitectural mechanisms, which makes them more and more difficult to understand and evaluate. KScalar is a graphical simulation tool that facilitates the study of such processors. It allows students to analyze the performance behavior of a wide range of processor microarchitectures: from a very simple in-order, scalar pipeline, to a detailed out-of-order, superscalar pipeline with non-blocking caches, speculative execution, and complex branch prediction. The simulator interprets executables for the Alpha AXP instruction set: from very short program fragments to large applications. The object's program execution may be simulated in varying levels of detail: either cycle-by-cycle, observing all the pipeline events that determine processor performance, or million cycles at once, taking statistics of the main performance issues.Instructors may use KScalar in several ways. First, it may be used to provide demonstrations in lectures or online learning environments. Second, it allows students to investigate the characteristics of specific processor microarchitectures as practical short assignments associated to a lecture course. Third, students may undertake major projects involving the optimization of real programs at the software-hardware interface, or involving the optimization of a processor microarchitecture for a given application workload.A preliminary version of KScalar has been successfully used in several lecture courses during the last two years in the University Autónoma of Barcelona. It runs on a x86/Linux/KDE system. The graphical interface has been developed using the KDE and QT libraries. The simulator engine running behind the graphical interface is a heavily-modified version of SimpleScalar. KScalar code is available under the terms of the GNU and SimpleScalar General Public License