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

由于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，预计将以更快的速度继续下去，预计具有数十个内核和数百个加速器(IP)的移动系统将在未来提供前所未有的特性和功能水平。对于计算机架构师来说，设计具有所需的服务质量和功率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。这需要及早探索完整的设计空间，以了解系统级设计的权衡。与可用于进行架构研究的丰富的仿真工具集不同，目前还没有公开可用的仿真基础设施来设计和评估现有的和新兴的手持平台，涵盖完整的硬件和软件堆栈。CRI社区基础设施(CI)项目的目标是开发一个开源的仿真工具，称为GEMDROID，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仿真器、GEM5架构仿真器和各种IP和传感器，以在目标SoC平台上忠实地模拟各种移动应用；(Ii)在GEMDROID中集成功率建模工具，用于功率/能量分析；(Iii)扩展GEMDROID以模拟可穿戴设备/物联网；(Iv)通过详细的测量验证性能和功率模型；以及(V)开发手持平台基准套件。拟议的GEMDROID仿真器有望成为研究人员和从业者进行各种移动系统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，并定期举办讲习班和教程，以建立该工具包的用户和开发人员社区。基础设施将作为我们关于移动架构的本科生和研究生课程的教学辅助工具。外展活动包括参加宾夕法尼亚州立大学的U-Science计划，以吸引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(工程访问周末)计划，让他们接触到这一重要领域。

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.