ReSim, a Trace-Driven, Reconfigurable ILP Processor Simulator

Modern processors are becoming more complex and as features and application size increase, their evaluation is becoming more time-consuming. To date, design space exploration relies on extensive use of software simulation that when highly accurate is slow. In this paper we propose ReSim, a parameterizable ILP processor simulation acceleration engine based on reconfigurable hardware. We describe ReSim’s trace-driven microarchitecture that allows us to simulate the operation of a complex ILP processor in a cycle serial fashion, aiming to simplify implementation complexity and to boost operating frequency. Being trace driven, ReSim can simulate timing in an almost ISA independent fashion, and supports all SimpleScalar ISAs, i.e. PISA, Alpha, etc. We implemented ReSim for the latest Xilinx devices. In our experiments with a 4-way superscalar processor ReSim achieves a simulation throughput of up to 28MIPS, and offers more than a factor of 5x improvement over the best reported ILP processor hardware simulators.