Simics

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Simics is a full-system simulator from Virtutech capable of running unchanged production binaries of the target hardware at high-performance speeds. Simics can simulate systems such as Alpha, AMD64, ARM, EM64T, IA-64, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC-V9, and x86 CPUs.

Many operating systems can be run on the simulated hardware, including MS-DOS, Windows, VxWorks, OSE, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux.

Simics 3.0, released in the Fall of 2005, includes major new technology enhancements:

Device Modeling Language (DML)
Device Modeling Language Compiler (DMLC)
Hindsight, the world’s first general-purpose development tool for reversible execution

The addition of DML offers a more productive environment for creating and configuring non-standard devices such as ASICs and FPGAs. DML largely automates the routine task of creating code to manage the hundreds and often thousands of registers in a modern system. The DMLC translates DML into high-performance device models that enable Simics to simulate complete electronic systems at a performance measured in speeds of up to billions of simulated instructions per second. DML enables developers to start programming earlier, saving valuable time and capital early on in the product life-cycle.

Debugging on real hardware typically consumes more than half a programmer’s time during the development process. When an error occurs, hardware-based solutions require re-booting and re-running the code in an attempt to halt execution just before the problem. In contrast, Simics Hindsight introduces the ability for software developers to run code backward once an error is detected. Improving debugging productivity with reverse code execution significantly shortens the software development and testing phase of the product life-cycle.

Virtutech has also integrated Simics 3.0 into the Eclipse framework. For the first time, full system simulation, including reverse debugging and execution with Hindsight, is available to the users that are standardizing on Eclipse as their integrated development environment (IDE).