NGS:Collaborative Research: Structural and Composable Performance Simulation of Complex Systems

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The most prevalent modeling methodology for computational systems employed today,hand-writing monolithic simulators in sequential programming languages, yields simulators that aredifficult to retarget or integrate with one another. The proposed solution, the Liberty Simulation Environment (LSE), automatically constructs simulatorsfrom machine descriptions that closely resemble the structure of hardware. This structural resemblanceto the hardware provides confidence in the model and frees systems researchers to think about systems, notsimulator coding concerns. LSE's strict but general component communication contract enables the creationof highly reusable component libraries and eases the task of rapidly exploring ever more exotic designs. LSEcomponents and descriptions can be hierarchically composed of other components and can exist at any levelof abstraction (statistical to gate-level). This choice of abstraction level combined with partial specificationsupport allow models to be iteratively refined; descriptions generate fully functional simulators from thevery start, allowing users to specify and validate precise models incrementally. Through observing currentand future users of LSE, we will continually refine the framework to arrive at the most effective design ofthese features in practice.