The Augmint multiprocessor simulation toolkit for Intel x86 architectures

Most publicly-available simulation tools only simulate RISC architectures. These tools cannot capture the instruction mix and memory reference patterns of CISC architectures. In this paper, we present an overview of Augmint, an execution-driven multiprocessor simulation toolkit that fills this gap by supporting Intel x86 architectures. Augmint also supports trace-driven simulation for uniprocessors as well as multiprocessors, with minor effort on the part of simulator developers. Augmint runs m4-macro-extended C and C++ applications such as those in the SPLASH and SPLASH-2 benchmark suites. Augmint supports a threadbased programming model with shared global address space and private stack space. Augmint supports a simulator interface compatible with that of the MINT simulation toolkit for MIPS architectures, thus allowing the reuse of most architecture simulators written for MINT. Augmint simulations run on x86-based uniprocessor systems under UNIX or Windows NT. The source code of Augmint is publicly available from http://www.csrd.uiuc.edu/iacoma/augmint.