Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: Pavel Pisa <p...@cmp.felk.cvut.cz>
* Package name : qtmips Version : 0.6.8 Upstream Author : Pavel Pisa <p...@cmp.felk.cvut.cz> * URL : https://github.com/cvut/QtMips/ * License : GPL Programming Lang: C++ Description : MIPS CPU simulator for education purposes with pipeline and cache visualization. The project has started as diploma theses work of Karel Koci. The complete text of the thesis Graphical CPU Simulator with Cache Visualization is available from the online archive of the Czech Technical University in Prague. https://dspace.cvut.cz/bitstream/handle/10467/76764/F3-DP-2018-Koci-Karel-diploma.pdf The document provides analysis of available alternative simulators, overview of the project architecture and basic usage information. The used MIPS CPU building block diagram, and a pipeline model matches lecture slides prepared by Michal Stepanovsky for the subject Computer Architectures. The course is based on the book Computer Organization and Design, The HW/SW Interface written by professors Paterson and Henessy. Reasons to package - We have not found appropriate tool for teaching of CPU pipeline and cache basis. There are expensive professional tools which work on real CPUs RTL level and many tools to provide approximation computations of the cache performance etc. We have used MipsIt emulator https://www.eit.lth.se/fileadmin/eit/courses/eit090/MipsIt/MipsITEnvRef.html in the past but it is Windows only and dated. SPIM is widely used but it provides no pipeline and extension is almost impossible because it interprets instructions directly. MARS is even better with IDE ideal for education but again its internals are centered about software instructions emulation. QtMips decodes instructions to set of signals which are propagated through pipeline stages similar way as on real hardware. Result is quite low speed with huge graphics overhead but with internal state visualization. On the other hand it is much faster then complete chip with RTL simulation. - The QtMips simulator is used in the course for 350 students now and even other faculty expressed interest to use it. It can be quite useful for many universities and it matches well the classic and widely used book for the subject. - I have led the diploma thesis and I have done substantial enhancements in the past months to make emulator fit needs of our seminaries. I have intent to mantain the package as time allows. The backup person is Karel Koci - initial project author. - Project is already built in Ubuntu launchapd https://launchpad.net/qtmips and Suse Open Build Service https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:ppisa/qtmips
