A dynamic binary translation approach to architectural simulation

Abstract

We present the design of a PowerPC-based simulation infrastructure for architectural research. Our infrastructure uses an execution-driven out-of-order processor timing simulator from the SimpleScalar tool set. While porting SimpleScalar to the PowerPC architecture, we would like to remain compatible with other versions of SimpleScalar. We accomplish this by performing dynamic binary translation of the PowerPC instruction set architecture to the SimpleScalar instruction set architecture, and by mapping the PowerPC architectural state onto the SimpleScalar register set. Using this infrastructure, we execute unmodified PowerPC binaries on an out-of-order processor timing simulator which implements the SimpleScalar architecture. We describe and investigate trade-offs in the translation of some complex PowerPC instructions and advocate adoption of speculative decode to optimize instruction translations for the common case. We find that simple decode predictors can reach better than 90% accuracy for guiding speculative decode.