Accelerating Architectural-Level Full-System Multiprocessor Simulations Using FPGAs

An architectural-level, full-system simulator such as Virtutech Simics is a powerful and versatile research enabler for both architectural exploration and advanced OS/compiler development. Its main shortcoming is limited throughput, especially when simulating multicore/multiprocessor systems. In this talk, we present the ProtoFlex simulation architecture for accelerating full-system multiprocessor simulation using FPGAs. In ProtoFlex, only a small set of frequently encountered behaviors are implemented in the FPGA for acceleration while a software-based reference simulator supports the extensive set of infrequent behaviors. Furthermore, the m...