A high performance simulator system for a multiprocessor system based on a multi-way cluster

Abstract

In the ubiquitous era, it is necessary to research on the architectures of multiprocessor system with high performance and low power consumption. A processor simulator developed in high level language is useful because of its easily changeable system architecture which includes application specific instruction sets and functions. However, there is a problem in processing speed that both PCs and workstations provide insufficient performance for the simulation of a multiprocessor system. In this research, a simulator for a multiprocessor system based on the multi-way cluster was developed. In the developed simulator system, one processor model consists of an instruction set simulator (ISS) process and several inter-processor communication processes. In order to get the maximization of the simulation performance, each processor model is assigned to the specific CPU on the multi-way cluster. Also, each inter-processor communication process is implemented using MPI library, which can minimize the CPU resource usage in a communication waiting state. The evaluation results of the processing and communication performance using a distributed application program such as JPEG encoding show that each ISS process in the developed simulator system consumes approximately 100% CPU resources for keeping enough inter-processor communication performance. This result means that the performance increases in proportion to the number of integrated CPUs on the cluster. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.