The gem5 Simulator: Version 20.0+
Abstract
The open-source and community-supported gem5 simulator is one of the most popular tools for computer architecture research. This simulation infrastructure allows researchers to model modern computer hardware at the cycle level, and it has enough fidelity to boot unmodified Linux-based operating systems and run full applications for multiple architectures including x86, Arm, and RISC-V. The gem5 simulator has been under active development over the last nine years since the original gem5 release. In this time, there have been over 7500 commits to the codebase from over 250 unique contributors which have improved the simulator by adding new features, fixing bugs, and increasing the code quality. In this paper, we give and overview of gem5's usage and features, describe the current state of the gem5 simulator, and enumerate the major changes since the initial release of gem5. We also discuss how the gem5 simulator has transitioned to a formal governance model to enable continued improvement and community support for the next 20 years of computer architecture research.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2007.03152,
title = {The gem5 Simulator: Version 20.0+},
author = {Jason Lowe-Power and Abdul Mutaal Ahmad and Ayaz Akram and Mohammad Alian and Rico Amslinger and Matteo Andreozzi and Adrià Armejach and Nils Asmussen and Brad Beckmann and Srikant Bharadwaj and Gabe Black and Gedare Bloom and Bobby R. Bruce and Daniel Rodrigues Carvalho and Jeronimo Castrillon and Lizhong Chen and Nicolas Derumigny and Stephan Diestelhorst and Wendy Elsasser and Carlos Escuin and Marjan Fariborz and Amin Farmahini-Farahani and Pouya Fotouhi and Ryan Gambord and Jayneel Gandhi and Dibakar Gope and Thomas Grass and Anthony Gutierrez and Bagus Hanindhito and Andreas Hansson and Swapnil Haria and Austin Harris and Timothy Hayes and Adrian Herrera and Matthew Horsnell and Syed Ali Raza Jafri and Radhika Jagtap and Hanhwi Jang and Reiley Jeyapaul and Timothy M. Jones and Matthias Jung and Subash Kannoth and Hamidreza Khaleghzadeh and Yuetsu Kodama and Tushar Krishna and Tommaso Marinelli and Christian Menard and Andrea Mondelli and Miquel Moreto and Tiago Mück and Omar Naji and Krishnendra Nathella and Hoa Nguyen and Nikos Nikoleris and Lena E. Olson and Marc Orr and Binh Pham and Pablo Prieto and Trivikram Reddy and Alec Roelke and Mahyar Samani and Andreas Sandberg and Javier Setoain and Boris Shingarov and Matthew D. Sinclair and Tuan Ta and Rahul Thakur and Giacomo Travaglini and Michael Upton and Nilay Vaish and Ilias Vougioukas and William Wang and Zhengrong Wang and Norbert Wehn and Christian Weis and David A. Wood and Hongil Yoon and Éder F. Zulian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.03152},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Source, comments, and feedback: https://github.com/darchr/gem5-20-paper