Limes: a multiprocessor simulation environment for PC platforms

This paper presents a multiprocessor simulation environment, developed with the aim to facilitate the researches of multiprocessor systems at the University of Belgrade. It comprises a simulation tool applicable for architecture studies of shared-address space multiprocessors, and a detailed model of bus-based cache coherent multiprocessor system. The environment executes on PC platforms and, while showing comparable performance with other tools of similar purpose, benefits from potential reusability of its realistic simulated models. The tool provides a simple general interface that allows for the hardware lying underneath the simulated processors to be modeled in a manner similar to the VHDL approach, but with far greater efficiency. The included model is easily extendible to other bus-based systems, and the basics of the design methodology are presented.