CI-New: GEMDROID: A Comprehensive Platform for Studying Architectural Issues for Next Generation Mobile Systems

由于对智能手机和可穿戴设备等功能丰富的移动系统的需求已经超过了其他计算系统，并且预计将继续以更快的速度增长，预计未来将设计具有数十个核心和数百个加速器（ip）的移动系统，以提供前所未有的功能和功能水平。对于计算机架构师来说，设计具有所需QoS和功耗预算以及其他设计约束的此类系统将是一项艰巨的任务，因为任何临时的、零碎的解决方案都不太可能产生最佳设计。这需要尽早探索完整的设计空间，以了解系统级设计的权衡。不像一组丰富的仿真工具可用于进行架构研究，没有公开可用的仿真基础设施，用于设计和评估现有和新兴的手持平台，涵盖完整的硬件和软件堆栈。这个CRI社区基础设施（CI）项目的目标是开发一个名为GEMDROID的开源仿真工具，用于促进移动平台上的架构研究。该项目包括以下任务：(i)集成开源Android模拟器、GEM5架构模拟器和各种ip和传感器，在目标SoC平台上忠实地模拟各种移动应用程序；将电力建模工具纳入GEMDROID进行电力/能源分析；（iii）扩展GEMDROID以模拟可穿戴设备/物联网；用详细的测量来验证性能和功率模型；(v)为手持平台开发基准套件。拟议的GEMDROID模拟器有望成为研究人员和从业人员在移动系统上进行各种设计和评估工作的第一个开源工具。该平台将分发给广泛的研究界，并定期组织讲习班和教程，以建立这个工具集的用户和开发人员社区。该基础设施将作为我们本科和研究生移动架构课程的教学辅助工具。外展活动包括参与宾夕法尼亚州立大学的U-Science项目，吸引K-12学生、教育工作者、本科生和研究生以及对STEM领域感兴趣的社区成员，以及VIEW（参观工程周末）项目，让他们接触这一重要领域。

As the demand for feature-rich mobile systems such as smart phones and wearables has outpaced other computing systems and is expected to continue at a faster rate, it is projected that mobile systems with tens of cores and hundreds of accelerators (IPs) will be designed to provide unprecedented level of features and functionality in future. Design of such systems with the required QoS and power budgets along with other design constraints will be a daunting task for computer architects, since any ad hoc, piece-meal solution is unlikely to result in an optimal design. This requires early exploration of the complete design space to understand the system-level design trade-offs. Unlike a rich set of simulation tools available for conducting architecture research, there is no publicly available simulation infrastructure for design and evaluation of existing and emerging handheld platforms that covers the complete hardware and software stack.The goal of this CRI Community Infrastructure (CI) project is to develop an open-source simulation tool, called GEMDROID, for facilitating architectural research on mobile platforms. The project encompasses the following tasks:(i) Integrate the open-source Android emulator, GEM5 architecture simulator and a wide variety of IPs and sensors to faithfully simulate a wide variety of mobile applications on a target SoC platform; (ii) Incorporate power modelling tools in GEMDROID for power/energy analyses; (iii) Extend GEMDROID to simulate wearables/IoTs; (iv) Validate the performance and power models with detailed measurements; and (v) Develop a benchmark suite for handheld platforms.The proposed GEMDROID simulator is expected to be the first open-source tool for researchers and practitioners to conduct a wide variety of design and evaluation work on mobile systems. The platform would be disseminated to the broad research community, with regular workshops and tutorial organized for building a community of users and developers for this toolset. The infrastructure would serve as a teaching aid in our undergraduate and graduate courses on mobile architectures. The outreach activities include participation in the U-Science program at Penn State to engage K-12 students, educators, undergraduate and graduate students, and interested community members in the STEM fields and the VIEW (Visit-In-Engineering Weekend) program to expose them to this important area.