Complete Computer System Simulation: The SimOS Approach

  • Authors:
  • Mendel Rosenblum;Stephen A. Herrod;Emmett Witchel;Anoop Gupta

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology: Systems & Technology
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

The SimOS simulation environment is capable of modeling complete computer systems, including a full operating system and all application programs that run on top of it. Two features help make this possible. First, SimOS provides an extremely fast simulation of system hardware. Workloads running in the SimOS simulation environment can achieve speeds less than a factor of 10 slower than native execution. At this simulation speed, we can boot and interactively use the operating system under study.The other feature that enables SimOS to model the full operating system is its ability to control the level of simulation detail. During the execution of a workload, SimOS can switch among a number of hardware component simulators. These simulators vary in the amount of detail they model and the speed at which they run. Using multiple levels of simulation detail, a researcher can focus on the important parts of a workload while skipping over the less interesting parts.SimOS allows a system designer to evaluate all the hardware and software performance factors in the context of the actual programs that will run on the machine. Computer architects have used SimOS to study the effects of new processor and memory system organizations on workloads such as large, scientific applications and a commercial database system. Designers have used SimOS for developing, debugging, and performance-tuning an operating system for a next-generation multiprocessor.