II-NEW: Acquisition of FPGA-Based Emulation Hardware for Research in Computer Systems Architecture

最近从单核到多核和多核体系结构的转变以及硬件和软件的日益复杂给计算机系统行业带来了许多挑战。计算机体系结构研究对于寻找设计、编程、调试和运行基于多核处理器的未来计算机系统的新方法至关重要。在过去的二十年里，计算机体系结构研究主要依靠软件模拟来定量评估新的体系结构思想和探索设计空间。然而，基于仿真的研究无法跟上对新体系结构和新基准日益增长的需求，存在仿真时间过长、复杂性过重和可信度有限的问题。基于现场可编程门阵列的硬件仿真器为仿真提供了一种有吸引力且经济高效的替代方案：它们解决了软件仿真器的主要弱点--可伸缩性、速度和可靠性，同时提供了类似级别的灵活性、可观察性和重复性。现代的现场可编程门阵列可以容纳多达16个以超过200 MHz的时钟速度运行的处理器核心。在这些速度下，它们能够对复杂的多核架构进行全系统仿真，运行操作系统和真实世界的应用程序，并且比相应的模拟器快几个数量级。该项目将在亨茨维尔的阿拉巴马大学获得新的基于FPGA的仿真硬件基础设施。它将被高级计算机体系结构和系统实验室(Lacasa)的研究人员使用，以帮助他们正在进行的研究工作，为越来越多的程序员瞄准新的体系结构？单核和多核计算机系统的生产率和可靠性。该基础设施还将用于几个研究生和本科生计算机工程课程，以改善学术培训和学习体验，并帮助招聘工作。

A recent shift from single-core to multi-core and many-core architectures and rising complexity of both hardware and software pose a number of challenges to computer systems industry. Computer architecture research is crucial in finding new approaches for designing, programming, debugging, and operating future computer systems based on multi-core processors.Computer architecture research has predominantly relied on software simulations for quantitative evaluations of new architectural ideas and design space exploration in the last two decades. However, simulation-based research cannot keep pace with growing demands of new architectures and new benchmarks, suffering from extremely long simulation times, over-burdening complexity, and limited credibility. FPGA-based hardware emulators provide an attractive and cost-effective alternative to simulation: they address key weaknesses of software simulators - scalability, speed, and credibility, while offering similar levels of flexibility, observability, and reproducibility. Modern FPGAs can accommodate up to 16 processor cores running at clock speeds of over 200 MHz. At these speeds, they enable full-system emulation of complex multi-core architectures, run operating systems and real-world applications, and are several orders of magnitude faster than corresponding simulators.This project will acquire new FPGA-based emulation hardware infrastructure at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. It will be used by researchers in the Laboratory for Advanced Computer Architectures and Systems (LaCASA), to help their ongoing research efforts targeting new architectures for increasing programmers? productivity and dependability in both single-core and multi-core computer systems. The infrastructure will also be used in several graduate and undergraduate computer engineering courses to improve academic training and learning experience, and help recruiting efforts.