Abstract-This paper introduces the Graphite open-source distributed parallel multicore simulator infrastructure. Graphite is designed from the ground up for exploration of future multicore processors containing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of cores. It provides high performance for fast design space exploration and software development. Several techniques are used to achieve this including: direct execution, seamless multicore and multi-machine distribution, and lax synchronization. Graphite is capable of accelerating simulations by distributing them across multiple commodity Linux machines. When using multiple machines, it provides the illusion of a single process with a single, shared address space, allowing it to run off-theshelf pthread applications with no source code modification. Our results demonstrate that Graphite can simulate target architectures containing over 1000 cores on ten 8-core servers. Performance scales well as more machines are added with near linear speedup in many cases. Simulation slowdown is as low as 41× versus native execution.
A recent multicore processor simulator called Graphite REF targets systems with thousands of cores.
Graphite: A distributed parallel simulator for multicores
HPCA - 16 2010 The Sixteenth International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
HPCA - 16 2010 The Sixteenth International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
Computer Science