Fast and Accurate Architectural Simulation

Vijay S. Pai
Assistant Professor
ECE Department
Rice University

Simulation is the most widely used technique to evaluate proposals in the field of computer architecture. However, traditional simulation techniques have imposed a substantial tradeoff between accuracy and speed. In particular, the most common methodologies for multiprocessor architectures see large and variable errors in performance simulation and are unable to model the impact of many modern software optimizations. On the other hand, the most detailed simulators (such as Rice's own RSIM) are typically 10 times slower, making it extremely difficult to model many interesting workloads.

This talk focuses on the DirectRSIM simulation system, which exploits software characteristics and hardware approximations to achieve accuracy comparable to fully detailed simulators with much less performance impact. This talk concludes with new directions in architectural simulation and performance evaluation.

For additional information, contact:

Vijay S. Pai at vijaypai@rice.edu

Last Updated: September 19, 2001