THE DESIGN OF AN EFFICIENT SIMULATOR FOR THE PENTIUM PRO PROCESSOR

The increasing size and complexity of computer systems has created the need to develop new techniques to facilitate the design and evaluation of developing architectures. The most comOl0n technique applied to the development of new architectures is simulation, which permits detailed accurate o10deling of the architecture. However, there are several probleols associated with using sill1ulation in developing conlputer systems. First, traditional sinlulation approaches are not flexible enough to permit easy extension or 1110dification of the o10del. While most sinlulators are paranleterized to provide flexibility, paran1eterization alone is not adequate to pernlit the ll10dification and extension required for developing architectures. Second, traditional simulation approaches are cOll1putation intensive, slowing development and prohibiting sin1ulation of large progralllS. To address the first problenl, we use an object-oriented design for our sinlulator to produce a flexible, extensible ll10del. To address the second problenl, we incorporate the decode step of processor simulation into the state of each instruction object, saving the tinle to sinlulate the decode during execution. We have implenlented a prototype of our design and initial experin1ents \vith the objectoriented prototype, coded in C++, ran twice as fast as another prototype that we iOlplenlented using the traditional approach to simulation where the simulator was written in C.