Fast accurate simulation of large shared memory multiprocessors

Fast computer simulation is an essential tool in the design of large parallel computers. We discuss the design and performance of our Fast Accurate Simulation Tool, FAST. We start by summarizing the tradeoffs made in the designs of this and other simulators. The key ideas used in this simulator involve execution driven simulation techniques that modify the object code of the application program being studied. This produces an augmented version of the code that is directly executed and performs much of the work of the simulation. We extend the previous work in execution driven simulation by introducing several new uses for code augmentation. The result of these techniques is a simulator that is one to two orders of magnitude faster than previous simulators of comparable accuracy.<
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