I have been working with computer simulation and computer architecture for more than 20 years, and one thing that has been remarkably stable over time is the simulation slowdown inherent in “cycle accurate” computer simulation. Regardless of who I talked to or what they were modeling, the simulators ran at around 100 thousand times slower than the machine being modeled. It even holds true going back to the 1960s! However, there is a variant of simulation that aims to make useful performance predictions while running around 10x faster (or more) – mechanistic models (in particular, the Sniper simulator).
Continue reading “Simulating Computer Architecture with “Mechanistic” Models – No more 100k Slowdown?”