C37. Updating multicore processor simulator to support dynamic design in fetch stage

Abstract

During the early design space exploration phase of the microprocessor design process, a variety of enhancements and design options are evaluated by analyzing the performance model of the microprocessor. Current multicore processor is based on complex designs, integrating different components on a single chip, such as hardware threads, processor cores, memory hierarchy or interconnection networks. The permanent need to enhance the performance of multicore motivates the development of dynamic design, using historical data of previous runs to predict new value of architecture parameter. Some basic notions multicore processors architectures are affected by the problem of long-latency instructions stalling the processor pipeline. In this paper, the simulation multicore tool, multi2sim is adapted to cope with multicore processor dynamic design by adding dynamic feature in the policy of thread selection in fetch stage.