Cross-profiling as an efficient technique in simulating parallel computer systems

The simulation of parallel computers is discussed. In particular, a technique, called cross-profiling, that can be used to improve the efficiency of these simulations substantially is presented and evaluated. Cross-profiling, along with another simulation technique called execution-driven simulation, can be used to simulate one processor's instruction set (the target processor) with another processor that has a different instruction set (the host processor). Moreover, this technique is significantly faster than the usual method where several host instructions are executed to emulate the effect of executing a single instruction of the target processor. The cross-profiling technique is introduced, and it is shown how it can be combined with execution-driven simulation. The results of several experiments that demonstrate that the error introduced by cross-profiling is typically less than 1% are presented.<>