Comments on: The 1970 rule strikes again: Virtual Platform Principles in 1967

By: Observations from Uppsala » S4D 2010

Observations from Uppsala » S4D 2010 — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:18:50 +0000

[...] During the SystemC parts of his talk he did say a few things that I did not quite agree with… in particular that TLM was unknown prior to 1999. It was not called that, but it certainly existed in the field of full-system simulation. The main problem is that Thorsten only sees the EDA history of modeling, not the computer architecture and software-driven work that did simulations as far back as 1950 (the famous Gill paper), and fast simulation since at least 1967. [...]

By: Observations from Uppsala » Additional Notes on Transporting Bugs with Checkpoints

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 08:25:23 +0000

[...] is also a paper from 1969 that I wrote about a few years ago that does include the idea of recording and replaying asynchronous external inputs to a [...]

By: Observations from Uppsala » The TLM DAC

Observations from Uppsala » The TLM DAC — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:47:30 +0000

[...] I want to point out that TLM is not just SystemC. TLM is a general idea that has been in active use since the late 1960s. It is the obvious way to model a computer, if all you are concerned about is how it looks to the [...]

By: Jakob

Jakob — Sat, 31 May 2008 07:54:44 +0000

Thanks! I actually have that paper, it is quite brilliant what they do in some 30 machine instructions I was more looking for sources that address the more complex machines of the 1960s, especially with multiple processors.

By: Grant Martin

Grant Martin — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:03:30 +0000

Jakob

Try to find the chapter Steve Leibson wrote in the “Electronic Design Automation for Integrated Circuits Handbook” (CRC/Taylor and Francis, 2006) – it’s in Volume I, “EDA for IC System Design, Verification and Testing”. In this chapter, called “Using performance metrics to select microprocessor cores for IC designs”, (chapter 10), Steve talks about EDSAC from the University of Cambridge, developed by a team led by Maurice Wilkes. EDSAC had an instruction set simulator (the earliest one Steve could find out about); the ISS was described in a paper from 1951! – S. Gill, “The diagnosis of mistakes in programmes on the EDSAC”, Proceedings of the Royal Society Series A Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 22, 1951, Cambridge University Press, London, pp. 538-554. According to Steve’s writeup (I have not read the paper myself), the paper describes a tracing simulator for the instruction set. Perhaps this could be argued to be the first “virtual platform”, albeit of a computer that was rather simpler (but much larger) than today’s.