The simulator

The IBM Full System Simulator for the Cell Broadband Engine is a generalized simulator that can be configured to simulate a broad range of full-system configurations.

The simulator supports full functional simulation , including the: It can simulate and capture many levels of operational details on instruction execution, cache and memory subsystems, interrupt subsystems, communications, and other important system functions. It also supports some cycle-accurate simulation (performance or timing simulation).
Figure 1 shows the simulation stack. The simulator is part of the software development kit (SDK).
Figure 1. Simulation stacksimulation stack

If accurate timing and cycle-level simulation are not required, the simulator can be used in its functional-only mode , running as a debugger to test the functions and features of a program.

If cycle-level analysis is required, it can be used in performance simulation (or timing simulation) mode, to get accurate performance analyses.

Simulator configurations are extensible and can be modified using Tool Command Language (Tcl) commands to produce the type and level of analysis required.

The simulator itself is a general tool that can be configured for a broad range of microprocessors and hardware simulations. The SDK, however, provides a ready-made configuration of the simulator for Cell Broadband Engine system development and analysis.

  1. Simulator basics
    This section provided as overview of IBM Full System Simulator for the Cell Broadband Engine.
  2. Command-line interface
    To start the simulator in command-line mode, enter the following command: PATH=/opt/ibm/systemsim-cell/bin:$PATH; systemsim.
  3. Graphical User Interface
    The simulator's GUI offers a visual display of the state of the simulated system, including the PPE and the eight SPEs.
  4. Performance monitoring
    The simulator provides both functional-only and cycle-accurate simulation modes.
  5. SPU performance and semantics
    The simulator collects several statistics related to SPU performance.