gem5 Tutorial at HPCA 2023

We wish to make the computer architecture research community aware of a gem5 tutorial to be held at HPCA 2023 (Montreal, February 25th). This gem5 tutorial is designed to give computer architecture researchers a “crash course” in using gem5. No prior experience is required and the event is open to anyone wanting to attend.

The gem5 tutorial will be carried out over the course of a 3 hour session with attendees working from their own laptops. A tentative schedule is shown here:

– Getting started with gem5 [1.5 hours]
This will cover a basic introduction of gem5, gem5’s (software) architecture, compiling gem5, running simple systems using the gem5 standard library, and analyzing the gem5 statistical output.

– Extending gem5 [~1 hour]
This will go deeper into the structure of gem5 code and how to create a gem5 SimObject, a gem5 library component, and incorporating them into a working simulation.

– Deeper gem5 topics [~1 hour]
Here we will discuss the gem5 memory system, ruby, and go over other gem5 features such as checkpointing, KVM-mode, and the gem5 Simulator module. This session will conclude with a general discussion about gem5’s strengths and limitations.

Previous gem5 tutorials were well-attended and provided a good opportunity to network with others in the gem5 community.