Simple Scalar

SimpleScalar - simulator was developed at the Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. The SimpleScalar is a toolset with compiler, linker, simulator and visualization tools. The toolset includes sample simulators ranging from a fast functional simulator to a detailed, dynamically scheduled processor model that supports non-blocking caches, speculative execution, and state-of-the-art branch prediction. This simulator allows modification, including platform customization and possibility of extensibility. The toolset takes binaries compiled for the SimpleScalar architecture and simulates their execution on one of several provided processor simulators. Tool include sets of precompiled binaries (including SPEC95), plus a modified version of GNU GCC that allows compilation of FORTRAN and C code. This simulator was developed using C programming language. This simulator is UNIX based, and it is possible to port it to any 32-bit flavor of UNIX, but it can be ported to x86/WinNT using cygwin32 GNU tool. The simulators range from a fast high-level functional simulator to a detailed issue processor, that supports non-blocking cache, speculative executions, and branch prediction. The SimpleScalar toolset performs fast, flexible, and accurate simulation of modern processors that implement the SimpleScalar architecture (a close derivative of the MIPS architecture). SimpleScalar simulators can emulate the Alpha, PISA, ARM, and x86 instruction sets [12, 29, 30]. This program can be used by students, developers, and performance analytics. The SimpleScalar tool can be used to build modeling applications for program performance analysis, detailed microarchitectural modeling, and hardware-software co-verification. SimpleScalar tools and its extension have been used on the following projects: The MASE project at University of Michigan, The PowerAnalyzer project at University of Michigan, The SIMCA project at University of Minnesota, The Wattch project at Princeton University, The HydraScalar project at the University of Virginia.