Simulation Concepts to Model Real-Time and Dependability Properties of Symmetric Multiprocessor Systems

Project no: P1

Lars Albertsson, Erik Hagersten and Peter Magnusson,

SICS

Application as pdf, ps, html.

Prolongation application 2001-08-08

Support: 1 PhD students for 2 years decided 98-10-06.

Start: 99-05-01 with Lars Albertsson as PhD student.

Reports: First year report 00-08-17, Second year report 01-06-05

Local web: http://www.sics.se/~lalle/pamp/, SICS, Virtutech, Simics

 

Industry contacts

Peter Magnusson

Virtutech

Project: Simulation Concepts to Model Real-Time and Dependability Properties of Symmetric Multiprocessor Systems

Overview

Within the research project "Simulation Concepts to Model Real-Time Properties of Symmetric Multiprocessor Systems" we explore the use of complete system simulation for analysing high performance multiprocessor systems with quality of service requirements. By using Simics, a complete system simulator, operating systems and time sensitive applications may be analysed without intrusion. Our goal is to develop tools and methods for performance analysis and debugging of time-sensitive and indeterministic problems that appear in complex real-time and multiprocessor systems.

Results

• A temporal debugger, capable of analysis of operating system execution time flow. It has been demonstrated by debugging interrupt service time in Linux. Presented at MASCOTS 2000 and the second Real-Time Linux Workshop.
• A temporal debugger for user space applications. The key component of the debugger is a technique for mapping low-level data, provided by the simulator, to application level data useful to the debugger. The debugger was presented briefly in the Work-in-Progress session of RTAS 2001. This result, along with an example debugging and profiling session on a video decoder, has been submitted for consideration to the Multimedia Computing and Networking 2002 conference.
• A support meta-tool (tool to build tools) for probing of a simulated system. This meta-tool has been essential in the construction of the temporal debugger, and facilitates building other tools for probing programs in the simulated system. It is also useful for building other types of support software, such as models for application input.
• A study in related research regarding practical methods for constructing, validating, and predicting real-time system behaviour.

Cooperations

Research is pursued in cooperation with the recently started company Virtutech, manufacturer of Simics.

Publications

1. Lars Albertsson, Using Full Simulation for Debugging Real-Time Properties of Operating Systems. ARTES Graduate Student Conference 2000.
2. Lars Albertsson, Simulation-Based Debugging of Soft Real-Time Applications. Presented in the Work-in-Progress session of RTAS 2001. Available in postscript, gzipped postscript, and pdf.
3. Lars Albertsson and Peter S Magnusson, Using Complete System Simulation for Temporal Debugging of General Purpose Operating Systems and Workloads. Presented at MASCOTS 2000. Available in postscript, gzipped postscript and pdf.
4. Lars Albertsson and Peter S Magnusson, Simulation-Based Temporal Debugging of Linux. Presented at the second Real-Time Linux Workshop 2000. Available in postscript, gzipped postscript and pdf.