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Add a set of scripts to automatically test checkpointing in the regression framework. The checkpointing tests are similar to the switcheroo tests, but instead of switching between CPUs, they checkpoint the system and restore from the checkpoint again. This is done at regular intervals, typically while booting Linux. The implementation is fairly straight forward, with the exception that we have to work around gem5's inability to restore from a checkpoint after a system has been instantiated. We work around this by forking off child processes that does the actual simulation and never instantiate a system in the parent process unless a maximum checkpoint count is reached (in which case we just simulate the system to completion in the parent). Checkpoint testing is currently only enabled 32- and 64-bit ARM systems using atomic CPUs. Note: An unfortunate side-effect of forking is that every new process will overwrite the stats and terminal output from the previous process. This means that the output directory only contains data from the last checkpoint.
This is the gem5 simulator. The main website can be found at http://www.gem5.org A good starting point is http://www.gem5.org/Introduction, and for more information about building the simulator and getting started please see http://www.gem5.org/Documentation and http://www.gem5.org/Tutorials. To build gem5, you will need the following software: g++ or clang, Python (gem5 links in the Python interpreter), SCons, SWIG, zlib, m4, and lastly protobuf if you want trace capture and playback support. Please see http://www.gem5.org/Dependencies for more details concerning the minimum versions of the aforementioned tools. Once you have all dependencies resolved, type 'scons build/<ARCH>/gem5.opt' where ARCH is one of ALPHA, ARM, NULL, MIPS, POWER, SPARC, or X86. This will build an optimized version of the gem5 binary (gem5.opt) for the the specified architecture. See http://www.gem5.org/Build_System for more details and options. With the simulator built, have a look at http://www.gem5.org/Running_gem5 for more information on how to use gem5. The basic source release includes these subdirectories: - configs: example simulation configuration scripts - ext: less-common external packages needed to build gem5 - src: source code of the gem5 simulator - system: source for some optional system software for simulated systems - tests: regression tests - util: useful utility programs and files To run full-system simulations, you will need compiled system firmware (console and PALcode for Alpha), kernel binaries and one or more disk images. Please see the gem5 download page for these items at http://www.gem5.org/Download If you have questions, please send mail to gem5-users@gem5.org Enjoy using gem5 and please share your modifications and extensions.