Multi-core simulator advice

[bd3lk]

Hi guys,

I'm a first year computer science PhD student, looking at the following problem:

Research Problem

1. Explore a novel way of load balancing in multi-core/many-core systems.
2. Explore task management dynamics (mapping, remapping, migration) performed in the OS/middleware layer (modify/adapt an existing embedded OS, eg. uCLinux)

Preliminary problems

• No actual hardware/development platform available.
• Hence need to do preliminary research on existing host system using a software simulator (less abstraction than a system-level simulator eg: Simulink/Ptolemy/Labview are too high level than required)
• Existing host system specs: Intel Core i3, with 4GB RAM.
• Are there any simulation platforms (preferably opensource/free , commercial platforms may be considered) available ? OVPSim is something I'm thinking of looking at, anyone used it ? any other tools ?
• The software tool needs to be able to emulate a 3x3 multi-core system (preferably NoC based interconnect, the cores themselves can be ARM/MIPS processors, able to run an embedded OS), and be able to run copies on uCLinux on each of the individual cores, also simulate/emulate communication between cores.
• Need a high performance simulator, which can give results as close as possible to the real setup.

Sorry for the brief description guys, the project is just being spec'd out by my supervisor and myself, but I am not familiar with any kind of simulator, or the necessary tools I need to use. I am however familiar with Linux (but not a power user)

I am however familiar with Qemu - but I have read, it is not a good tool to use to emulate a multi-processor system.

any tips, help, suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

And sorry if I am posting in the wrong thread, not sure which domain this falls into (as it's both HW/SW related)

Many Thanks!
Rosh

 

[soloktanjung]

Hi,

Some tools I know:

McPAT: http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/mcpat/

gem5: http://www.m5sim.org/Main_Page

Thanks.

 

[Balaji Mc]

All your requirements can be done with gem5.

You can simulate multi-core systems, specify cache levels, cache line size and several other parameters and run simulations. It will give you a stats file which will have the complete simulation data (eg: no. of cpu cycles, memory accesses, cache hit/miss to name a few).

On the top of this system, you can also boot an operating system.