Simulator in a Nutshell

So far, we have covered why performance modeling matters, reviewed fundamental architectural concepts from a modeling perspective, and discussed how to select workloads properly. Before we begin collecting traces and running experiments in the remainder of the book, it is worth understanding what happens inside a simulator during a simulation. This chapter provides a brief walkthrough of simulation mechanics using ChampSim as the example. The goal is to develop a mental model of the process so that the content in the rest of the book has a clear context. Hence, we will not go over extensive details.