This is a boxing repository, including the gem5 repository, the nvmain repository and the runtime system implementation. The gem5 and nvmain are forked and slightly modified, to enable the BUS_ACCESS_ST performance counter of ARMv8 and make gem5 compile together with nvmain. Follow the subsequent instructions to checkout, compile and run the entire simulation.

Checkout

First, checkout this repository and change to the drectory:

cd NVMSimulator

Next, pull the subrepos:

git submodule init

git submodule update

Compile gem5

Everything should be there to compile gem5 now. Pleas take care of the several dependencies and make sure the necessary software is installed on your machine. Known so far: build-essential scons boost

Switch to the gem5 folder:

cd gem5

Compile gem5 together with NVMain

scons EXTRAS=../nvmain ./build/ARM/gem5.fast

In case you run into syntax error trouble with python3, force the compilation process to use python2:

SCONS_LIB_DIR=/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages python2 \ which scons` -j 8 EXTRAS=../nvmain ./build/ARM/gem5.fast`

When the compilation completes, the gem5 is ready to use.

Setting up a simulation

First, you need to compile the runtime system together with the application, this requires a ARM64 cross-compiler. We recommend to use the aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc for this purpose.

Switch to the runtime system:

cd nvm-rt

The target application is found in the folder application and can be modified there. Several test applications can be found in the application.old folder and can be copied to the application folder.

Once the application is setup properly, the runtime system can be compiled by typing

make clean; make

The simulation can be directly started by typing:

make run

Keep in mind, that the full system simulation makes output to a simulated UART device, thus debug outputs are only visible in the simulated UART output. To monitor this output, type in another terminal:

cd gem5

tail -f m5out/system.terminal

If the simulation exits properly, the memory trace should be copied to

nvm-rt/build/trace.nvt

If you cancel the simulation, the unfinished trace can be found at

nvmain/Config/nvmain.nvt

Analyzing the tracefile

In the subfolder analysis you can find some scripts, which perform a write aggregating analysis of the memory trace. You need an installation of R with the packages data.table and tikzDevice. Note that your system requires a fully functioning LaTeX installation for this.

Source the plot.R and call the do_plot or do_plot_log functions.