A simulation tool for evaluating shared memory systems

Presents an execution-driven simulator called SIMT which models the parallel execution of applications on multiprocessor systems with global memory abstractions. Based on Augmint, a simulation toolkit for Intel architectures, SIMT focuses on the memory hierarchy and contains facilities for designing and evaluating the memory system, especially cache coherence schemes and data allocation policies. In addition, it models a hardware monitor capable of collecting comprehensive performance data in the form of memory access histograms. SIMT allows to study the impact of various hardware and software techniques on performance. It is an easy-to-use and comprehensive tool for system designers and architecture developers to improve the existing infrastructure and enables the exploration of novel approaches in relation to applications and the memory system.