I had many interesting conversations at the HiPEAC 2017 conference in Stockholm back in January 2017. One topic that came up several times was the GEM5 research simulator, and some cool tricks implemented in it in order to speed up the execution of computer architecture experiments. Later, I located some research papers explaining the “full speed ahead” technology in more detail. The mix of fast simulation using virtualization and clever tricks with cache warming is worth a blog post.
Month: March 2017
Intel Blog: Continuous Delivery for Embedded Systems and how Simulation can Help
Doing continuous integration and continuous delivery for embedded systems is not necessarily all that easy. You need to get tools in place to support automatic testing, and free yourself from unneeded hardware dependencies. Based on an inspiring talk by Mike Long from Norway, I have a piece on how simulation helps with embedded CI and CD on my Software Evangelist blog on the Intel Developer Zone.
Off-Topic: Nerja, Costa del Sol, Spain
I and my wife recently took a short vacation in Nerja in Spain, a tourist town on the Costa del Sol. Late February was definitely low season, which made for a rather relaxing experience without the huge crowds that would be expected to fill up the place later in the year.
”Figure out What to Do”, Says the Manual
I just spend some hours building a new living room PC for the home. I based on common components like a Fractal Design Node 202 chassis and an MSI Z270i motherboard for my Intel Core i7-7700 processor. Trying to figure out how to put it together was a bit interesting though – especially if I had tried to do so without the help of the Internet. The manuals that came with some of the components were just completely useless, essentially boiling down to “please figure out what to do”.