Simics

Simics is a full-system simulator used to run unchanged production binaries of the target hardware at high-performance speeds. Simics was originally developed by the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), and then spun off to Virtutech for commercial development in 1998.[1] Virtutech was acquired by Intel in 2010 and Simics is now marketed by Wind River Systems,[2] which was in the past a subsidiary of Intel.

Simics
Original author(s)SICS, Virtutech
Developer(s)Wind River Systems
Stable release
6 / 2019
TypeFull-system simulator
LicenseProprietary
Websitewww.windriver.com/products/simics/

Simics contains both instruction set simulators and hardware models, and can simulate systems such as Alpha, x86-64, IA-64, ARM, MIPS (32- and 64-bit), MSP430, PowerPC (32- and 64-bit), SPARC-V8 and V9, and x86 CPUs. Many operating systems have been run on various varieties of the simulated hardware, including MS-DOS, Windows, VxWorks, OSE, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, QNX, RTEMS, and UEFI.

The NetBSD AMD64 port was initially developed using Simics before the public release of the chip.[3] The purpose of simulation in Simics is often to develop software for a particular type of embedded hardware, using Simics as a virtual platform.

The current version of Simics is 6 which was released publicly in 2019[4][5]. Simics runs on 64-bit Intel Architecture machines running Microsoft Windows and Linux (32-bit support was dropped with the release of Simics 5, since 64-bit provides significant performance advantages and is universally available on current hardware). The previous version, Simics 5, was released in 2015[6].

Simics has the ability to execute a system in forward and reverse direction.[7] Reverse debugging can illuminate how an exceptional condition or bug occurred. When executing an OS such as Linux in reverse using Simics, previously deleted files reappear when the deletion point is passed in reverse and scrolling and other graphical display and console updates occur backwards as well.

See also
  • ARM Fastsim, an instruction-set simulator and set of system models for ARM IP.
  • OVPsim, a full system simulation framework which is free for non-commercial use, and which comes with over 100 open source models and platforms that run Linux, Android, and many other operating systems.
  • Qemu, open-source program that can do full-system simulation in the same way as Simics.
  • SPIM, MIPS processor simulator designed to run R2000, R3000 etc.
  • Instruction set simulator

References
  1. "Simics Hindsight: Reverse Execution for Software Debugging". Virtual Strategy. May 4, 2005. Archived from the original on 2007-06-24.
  2. "Wind River to Add Virtutech Simics Products to Comprehensive Embedded Software Portfolio". Wind River Systems. February 5, 2010.
  3. "Simics used to port an OS". NetBSD Wiki. NetBSD.
  4. Engblom, Jakob (September 10, 2019). "Simics 6 at the Mountain Top". Intel Developer Zone Blog.
  5. Evoy, Sean (November 5, 2019). "Simics: Just when you thought it couldn't get any better". Wind River Blog.
  6. Engblom, Jakob (June 30, 2015). "Simics 5 is here - More Parallel than Ever". Wind River Blog.
  7. Engblom, Jakob. "Back to Reverse Execution". Wind River Blog. Wind River. Retrieved 3 July 2016.


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