Linux OS emulator and an application binary loader for a high performance microarchitecture simulator

Simulation is a critical step in the development of state of the art microprocessors. Accurate simulation allows designers to confidently investigate various designs, while fast simulation times allow designers to thoroughly explore a design space. RITSim is an endeavor to create a high accuracy, high quality microarchitecture simulation infrastructure. This simulation infrastructure will be available for academic research in low power and high performance computer systems. The scope of this work is to provide a Linux OS Emulator, a Binary Application Loader, and a Linux kernel running in a virtual environment for the RITSim project. In order to evaluate standard software loads and benchmark suites on target microarchitectures simulators must provide support for operating system calls. This may be accomplished with various levels of accuracy. Many past simulators chose to sacrifice simulation accuracy to improve simulation time, while others sacrificed portability and execution time for high accuracy results. This work provides three key elements to the RITSim environment in an effort to create a simulation environment that seamlessly combines both approaches to provide a single integrated tool that allows researchers to choose the approach that is best suited to their needs. A first order simulation mode is provided that makes use of emulated system calls that are executed on the host computer?s operating system to provide quick simulation times. This mode also maintains a high level of portability since the host operating system is used to access the hardware. A high accuracy mode is also available that runs in a highly detailed simulated operating system. When running in the high accuracy mode the simulated operating system must be loaded into a virtual environment allowing the actual instructions of the operating system code to be simulated. Another key element is the binary application loader. This is required by the simulator to load executables into the simulator?s virtual memory space and to prepare it for execution. This involves not only mapping or copying the executable into simulated virtual memory, but also the creation and initialization of a new user mode stack and configuration of the simulated processor?s user mode registers