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P-GAS: Parallelizing a Cycle-Accurate Event-Driven Many-Core Processor Simulator Using Parallel Discrete Event Simulation

Published: 17 May 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Multi-core processors are commonly available now, but most traditional computer architectural simulators still use single-thread execution. In this paper we use parallel discrete event simulation (PDES) to speedup a cycle-accurate event-driven many-core processor simulator. Evaluation against the sequential version shows that the parallelized one achieves an average speedup of 10.9x (up to 13.6x) running SPLASH-2 kernel on a 16-core host machine, with cycle counter differences of less than 0.1%. Moreover, super-linear speedups are achieved between running 1 thread and 8 threads due to reduced overhead of insert-event-to-queue time and increased cache size in parallel processing. We conclude that PDES could be an attractive option for achieving fast cycle-accurate many-core processor simulations.

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  • (2018)A superlinear speedup region for matrix multiplicationConcurrency and Computation: Practice & Experience10.1002/cpe.310226:11(1847-1868)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2018
  • (2012)CRAW/PProceedings of the 18th international conference on Parallel Processing10.1007/978-3-642-32820-6_12(102-114)Online publication date: 27-Aug-2012
  1. P-GAS: Parallelizing a Cycle-Accurate Event-Driven Many-Core Processor Simulator Using Parallel Discrete Event Simulation

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        PADS '10: Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation
        May 2010
        164 pages
        ISBN:9781424472925

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        IEEE Computer Society

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        Published: 17 May 2010

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        Author Tags

        1. SPLASH-2 kernel
        2. computer architectural simulators
        3. core host machine
        4. cycle-accurate event-driven many-core processor simulator
        5. multicore processors
        6. parallel discrete event simulation
        7. parallel processing
        8. single-thread execution

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        View all
        • (2018)A superlinear speedup region for matrix multiplicationConcurrency and Computation: Practice & Experience10.1002/cpe.310226:11(1847-1868)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2018
        • (2012)CRAW/PProceedings of the 18th international conference on Parallel Processing10.1007/978-3-642-32820-6_12(102-114)Online publication date: 27-Aug-2012

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