Software primitives for emulation of multiprocessor architectures
A. Svensson · 2002
An experimental emulation facility developed to evaluate design principles for multiple-instruction/multiple-data multiprocessors with distributed shared memory, is discussed. The hardware of the 38 processing elements is designed to support efficient emulation of mechanisms that would be implemented in hardware in the real system. One processor in each processing element executes the application while another processor runs the emulation software. A software environment and primitives are presented to simplify efficient implementation of emulators. A flexible system-call mechanism is provided for exchanging messages between the execution and the emulation processors. A separate bus communication mechanism is provided for implementation of interprocessor protocols, and software probes are used for monitoring purposes. Emulation principles are illustrated by implementation of a virtual memory system.>