This was a course assignment (Computer Architectecture and Design, year 3 core course for a bachelors in electrical and electronics engineering), releasing publically as the course is unlikely to be repeated.

Compiling and running

To compile, run:

$ make

You will need a version of make, as well as a C compiler. The compiler is assumed to be Clang, specify otherwise in the CC argument:

$ make CC=gcc

To run the program, specify the trace file as the first argument:

$ ./csim </path/to/trace> <cs> <bs> <assoc> <rpol>

Cache parameters will be calculated as follows:

• cache_size = 256 * 2^cs bytes (a value of 0 will create a cache of 256 bytes)
• block_size = 4 * 2^bs bytes (a value of 0 will create a block size of 4 bytes)
• associativity = 2^assoc ways (a value of 0 will create a direct mapped cache)
• rpol = {lru, clock, random} (corrosponding replacement policy is chosen)

The program will run the trace through the given cache, and print output a valid JSON string containing the results of the run (except in the event of a failed assertion, error strrings are not JSON). There is no trailing newline after the JSON string.

Example

$ ./csim traces/crc32.trace 0 0 1 random                 
{"accesses": 9601024, "hits": 7768596, "cold_misses": 64, "conflict_misses": 1459823, "capacity_misses": 372541, "cache_size": 256, "block_size": 4, "associativity": 2}

All iterations

There also exists a program csi which iterates through a large range of parameters for a given trace file:

$ ./csi </path/to/trace>

stdout contains space separated values for each iteration. Please see csi.c for details. Status is displayed on stderr. Order of status is rpol, cs, bs, assoc. rpol enumeration can be seen in csim.h.

Example stderr:

Now simulating: 1 0 0 0
Now simulating: 1 0 0 1
Now simulating: 1 0 0 2
Now simulating: 1 0 0 3
Now simulating: 1 0 0 4
Now simulating: 1 0 1 0
Now simulating: 1 0 1 1
Now simulating: 1 0 1 2
Now simulating: 1 0 1 3
Now simulating: 1 0 1 4
Now simulating: 1 0 2 0
Now simulating: 1 0 2 1
Now simulating: 1 0 2 2

About

General program design

• Main program logic is in csim.c in the function csim(Trace *t, uint64_t csize, uint64_t bsize, uint64_t assoc, int rpol). All parameters are passed in exactly as received from the command line, after sanitization.
• Variant of main.c in csi.c, automatically iterates through all parameters.
• Single header file (csim.h).
• Trace file is read into a linked list, and this list is passed onto csim. Structure of list is defined by Trace {aka struct trace} in csim.h.
• The csim(...) function ignores the root of the passed-in linked list, as only it's ->next is meaningful.

Code style

• C89 for the most part.
• Except for values which are to be printed, stdint.h's explictly sized integer types are used. Printed values are unsigned long. Flags are int, as memory is cheap and native integer performance is fun.