title: “ISCA 2022: gem5 Tutorial and Users' Workshop” permalink: events/isca-2022

We are happy to announce the gem5 Tutorial and Users' Workshop, to be co-located with ISCA 2022, in New York City, on Saturday June 11th 2022. We intend for this event to be held in person assuming no worsening COVID travel restrictions.

The gem5 Tutorial will be held in the morning session and will focus on teaching those new to gem5 how to use the latest version. It will be “crash course” in gem5 and assume no prior knowledge of using computer architecture simulators. The tutorial will focus heavily on new features in gem5, such as the gem5 standard library, so may be suitable for those who have used gem5 before but wish to refresh their skills.

The gem5 Users' Workshop will be held in the afternoon session. This will be an opportunity for the users of gem5 to give presentations on their contributions to gem5 and related research. The workshop will start with a 30 minute keynote by Prof. Jason Lowe-Power, titled “Recent Advancements in Mainline gem5 v20.0 -- v21.2”. The workshop will continue with short presentations (15 minutes each) on gem5-related topics. We hope this will invoke discussions on gem5-related topics.

Key Dates

  • Workshop presentation proposal deadline: April 19th 2022 (Presentation abstracts can be submitted here)
  • Workshop acceptance notifications: May 2nd 2022
  • ISCA Conference: June 11th to June 15th 2022
  • gem5 Tutorial: June 11th 2022 (Morning Session)
  • gem5 Users' Workshop: June 11th 2022 (Afternoon Session)

The 4th gem5 Tutorial

The gem5 tutorial is designed to give computer architecture researchers, particularly those with no prior experience using a computer architecture simulator, the opportunity to learn how to use gem5. It will be held on the morning session of Saturday June 11th 2022.

Please keep an eye on the ISCA 2022 event page for details on registering for this event.

Preliminary Schedule (Subject to change)

Below is a preliminary schedule for the tutorial. It highlights the topics we intend to cover over the course of the 3-hour event.

  • Getting started with gem5 [1.5 hours]
    • A short history of gem5.
    • Overall (software) architecture of gem5.
    • Compiling gem5.
    • Introduction to running a gem5 simulation using prebuilt systems
    • First time running gem5 and interpreting the output.
    • Building a gem5 simulation using stdlib components.
    • Simple example to show select statistical outputs.
    • Work through examples building SE-mode and FS-mode simulations.
  • Extending gem5 [~1 hour]
    • Structure of gem5 C++ code.
    • Writing a simple SimObject.
    • Creating your own component, extending from the stdlib.
    • Running simulations using your SimObject/component.
  • Deeper gem5 topics [~1 hour]
    • The gem5 memory system.
    • Overview of Ruby.
    • A brief overview of other gem5 features.
    • Limitations of gem5.

The 4th gem5 Users' Workshop

The gem5 User's workshop will be held on Saturday June 11th 2022, in the afternoon session. The workshop will start with a 30 minute keynote presentation by Prof. Jason Lowe-Power titled “Recent Advancements in Mainline gem5 v20.0 -- v21.2”. This will be followed by a series of 15 minutes presentations. These presentations are an opportunity for users of gem5 to present gem5-related work and foster discussion.

Presentations are solicited on a broad ranges of topics relating to gem5, including (but not limited to):

  • New gem5 features and models
  • Improved models.
  • Validation against real hardware.
  • Software engineering related to gem5.
  • Experiences using gem5.
  • Tools, visualizations, data analysis tools, etc.

If you wish to present at this year‘s gem5 User’s workshop please provide a presentation proposal (a 1 page PDF) here: https://forms.gle/VZxXsWBniUPGBQdw5. Note: This is an in-person event. The presenter must attend the workshop.

The deadline for submitting a presentation proposal is April 19th with acceptance notifications sent out by May 2nd.