Simulation in the IBM ACS Project – Current Practices in 1966

I once wrote a blog post about the use of computer architecture pipeline simulation in the IBM ”Stretch” project, which seems to be the first use of computer architecture simulation to design a processor. After the ”Stretch” machine, IBM released the S/360 family in 1964. Then, the Control Data Corporation showed up with their CDC 6600 supercomputer, and IBM started a number of projects to design a competitive high-end computer for the high-performance computing market.  One of them, Project Y, became the IBM Advanced Computing Systems project (ACS). In the ACS project, simulation was used to document, evaluate, and validate the very aggressive design. There are some nuggets about the simulator strewn across historical articles about the ACS, as well as an actual technical report from 1966 that I found online describing the simulation technology! Thus, it is possible to take a bit of a deeper look at computer architecture simulation from the mid-1960s.

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Talking Checkpointing in SystemC at the SystemC Evolution Day 2017

inThere will be a session on checkpointing in SystemC at the upcoming  SystemC Evolution Day in München on October 18, 2017. I will be presenting it, together with some colleagues from Intel. Checkpointing is a very interesting topic in its own right, and I have written lots about it in the past – both as a technology and it applications.

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Off-Topic: Loka Brunn

More travel notes. This time from Loka Brunn, a spa hotel and conference facility in the vicinity of Grythyttan in mid-west Sweden. The place dates back to around 1720, when an organized “Kurort” was founded. I spent a weekend there with my wife, and found the place to be very relaxing and professionally run.

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