IMPICA (In-Memory PoInter Chasing Accelerator)

This repo consists of the simulator and the workloads for IMPICA (In-Memory PoInter Chasing Accelerator), an ICCD 2016 paper.

Folder structure

gem5: The main gem5-based simulator.

linux-aarch64-gem5-20140821: The Linux kernel code.

pim_driver: The Linux kernel driver for IMPICA.

workloads: The evaluated workloads.

System prerequisites

The system needs to be able to build gem5 and the Linux kernel for ARM. Please refer to:

http://www.gem5.org/Dependencies
https://wiki.linaro.org/Resources/HowTo/KernelDeploy#A3_-_Build_the_Kernel

If using Ubuntu, the dependecies are

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev gcc make git exuberant-ctags bc libssl-dev python-dev scons m4 build-essential g++ swig zlib-dev

Build the simulator and driver

cd gem5
scons -j8 PIM_DEVICE=btree build/ARM.gem5.opt

cd linux-aarch64-gem5-20140821
make menuconfig
make dep
make -j

cd pim_driver
make

The PIM_DEVICE can be btree, hash_table, or link_list. It needs to match the workload.

Prepare the disk image

Get the full-system files for 64-bit ARM at

http://www.gem5.org/dist/current/arm/aarch-system-2014-10.tar.xz

Follow the tutorial to prepare the disk image.

http://gem5.org/Ubuntu_Disk_Image_for_ARM_Full_System

This is an example to put the driver (pim_driver) and workloads into the disk image.

mount -oloop,offset=32256 aarch64-ubuntu-trusty-headless.img /mnt
cp -r pim_driver /mnt/home/
cp -r workloads /mnt/home/
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/
chroot .

Then go to the subdirectory of the workload and make it. Please remember to umount the image before running the simulator.

Run the simulator

cd gem5
M5_PATH=/path/to/full/system/ ./build/ARM/gem5.opt configs/example/fs.py --machine-type=VExpress_EMM64 -n 4 --mem-size=2048MB --disk-image=aarch64-ubuntu-trusty-headless.img --dtb-file=/path/to/full/system/binaries/vexpress.aarch64.20140821.dtb --kernel=/path/to/full/system/binaries/vmlinux.aarch64.20140821 

Open another terminal

cd gem5/util/term
make
m5 localhost 3456

Wait until the booting finishes, and login as root

You can make a checkpoint so you don't have to run the boot-up everytime

m5 checkpoint 

Install the driver in the simulator

cd /path/to/pim_driver
./go_test.sh

Now you can run the workload. All workloads make a checkpoint after initialization so you can resume the detailed (cycle accurate) simulation from that checkpoint. Assuming the second checkpoint is the one after workload initialization. For example, a detailed simulation can be executed as:

cd gem5
M5_PATH=/path/to/full/system/ --redirect-stdout --redirect-stderr --outdir=/path/to/output ./build/ARM/gem5.opt configs/example/fs.py --machine-type=VExpress_EMM64 -n 4 --mem-size=2048MB --disk-image=aarch64-ubuntu-trusty-headless.img --dtb-file=/path/to/full/system/binaries/vexpress.aarch64.20140821.dtb --kernel=/path/to/full/system/binaries/vmlinux.aarch64.20140821 -r 2 --checkpoint-dir=/path/to/checkpoints --caches --l2cache --cpu-type=detailed --ioc_size=32kB --ioc_lat=1 --pim_tlb_num=32 --l2_size=1MB --l1d_size=32kB

Reference Paper

Kevin Hsieh, Samira Khan, Nandita Vijaykumar, Kevin K. Chang, Amirali Boroumand, Saugata Ghose, and Onur Mutlu, Accelerating Pointer Chasing in 3D-Stacked Memory: Challenges, Mechanisms, Evaluation. In Proceedings of the 34th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), Phoenix, AZ, USA, October 2016.