The Arm Research Starter Kit: System Modeling using gem5

This Research Starter Kit will guide you through Arm-based system modeling using the gem5 simulator and a 64-bit CPU model. This High-Performance In-order (HPI) CPU model is tuned to be representative of a modern in-order Armv8-A implementation.

This Research Starter Kit is comprised of two main parts:

1. gem5: the source code for the gem5 simulator
2. arm-gem5-rsk: the current repository, which contains the scripts, patches and the documentation required to get started, and also run examples and benchmarks

Either clone the above repositories separately, or use the clone.sh script to clone both of them:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/arm-university/arm-gem5-rsk/master/clone.sh
$ bash clone.sh

The current release includes the following components:

• gem5_rsk_gem5_23.0.pdf: the documentation
• clone.sh: a script to download all the required materials
• read_results.sh: a script to read the gem5 statistics
• parsec_patches: contains patches for compiling PARSEC for the gem5 Full-System simulation mode
• parsec_rcs: contains a script for creating runscripts for PARSEC benchmarks
• Wiki: a cheat sheet, containing all code and examples provided in the documentation

This kit is suitable for computer system researchers looking to:

• develop Arm-based system modeling experience using gem5
• use a modern Armv8-A based processor model in their research

You will need intermediate knowledge of:

• linux
• computer architecture

And working knowledge of:

• C++
• Python

Topics covered

• Introduction to gem5
• Arm system modeling in gem5 in different modes
• A High-Performance In-order (HPI) Arm-based CPU model
• Benchmarking the HPI model