This document aims to provide instructions to create a gem5-compatible disk image containing the SPEC 2006 benchmark suite and also to provide necessary configuration files.
Creating a disk-image for SPEC 2006 requires the benchmark suite ISO file. More info about SPEC 2006 can be found https://www.spec.org/cpu2006/.
In this tutorial, we assume that the file CPU2006v1.0.1.iso contains the SPEC benchmark suite, and we provide the scripts that are made specifically for SPEC 2006 version 1.0.1. Throughout the this document, the root folder is src/spec-2006/. All commands should be run from this root folder.
The layout of the folder after the scripts are run is as follows,
spec-2006/ |___ gem5/ # gem5 folder | |___ disk-image/ | |___ shared/ | |___ spec-2006/ | |___ spec-2006-image/ | | |___ spec-2006 # the disk image will be generated here | |___ spec-2006.json # the Packer script | |___ CPU2006v1.0.1.iso # SPEC 2006 ISO (add here) | |___ configs | |___ system | |___ run_spec.py # gem5 config file | |___ vmlinux-4.19.83 # download link below | |___ README.md
First, to build m5 (required for interactions between gem5 and the guest):
git clone https://gem5.googlesource.com/public/gem5 cd gem5 cd util/m5 scons build/x86/out/m5
We use Packer, an open-source automated disk image creation tool, to build the disk image. In the root folder,
cd disk-image wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/1.6.0/packer_1.6.0_linux_amd64.zip #(download the packer binary) unzip packer_1.6.0_linux_amd64.zip ./packer validate spec-2006/spec-2006.json #validate the Packer script ./packer build spec-2006/spec-2006.json
gem5 scripts which configure the system and run the simulation are available in configs/. The main script run_spec.py expects following arguments:
usage: run_spec.py [-h] [-l] [-z] kernel disk cpu mem_sys benchmark size
-h: show this help message and exit.
-l, --no-copy-logs: optional, to not copy SPEC run logs to the host system, logs are copied by default, and are available in the result folder.
-z, --allow-listeners: optional, to turn on GDB listening ports, the ports are off by default.
kernel: required, a positional argument specifying the path to the Linux kernel. We have tested using version 4.19.83, which can be downloaded from http://dist.gem5.org/dist/v21-1/kernels/x86/static/vmlinux-4.19.83. Info on building Linux kernels for gem5 can be found in src/linux-kernel
disk: required, a positional argument specifying the path to the disk image containing SPEC 2006 benchmark suite.
cpu: required, a positional argument specifying the name of either a detailed CPU model or KVM CPU model.
The available CPU models are,
| cpu | Corresponding CPU model in gem5 |
|---|---|
kvm | |
o3 | DerivO3CPU |
atomic | AtomicSimpleCPU |
timing | TimingSimpleCPU |
mem_sys: required, a positional argument specifying the memory system. The available memory systems are,
| mem_sys | Notes |
|---|---|
classic | classic memory system |
MI_example | Ruby memory system |
MESI_Two_Level | Ruby memory system |
MOESI_CMP_directory | Ruby memory system |
benchmark: required, a positional argument specifying the name of the SPEC 2006 workload to run. The available benchmarks are,
size: required, a positional argument specifying the input data size. Valid values are test, train, and ref.
As a minimum the following parameters must be specified:
<gem5 X86 binary> --outdir <output directory> configs/run_spec.py <kernel> <disk> <cpu> <mem_sys> <benchmark> <size>
Note: --outdir is a required argument when running the gem5 binary with SPEC 2006. The path to the output directory must be an absoblute path.
Status of these benchmarks runs with respect to gem5-20, linux kernel version 4.19.83 and gcc version 7.5.0 can be found here.