VM-based Slack Emulation of Large-scale Systems

Patrick Bridges, Kevin Pedretti, and Dorian Arnold

This paper describes the design of a system to enable large-scale testing
of new software stacks and prospective high-end computing architectures.
The proposed architecture combines system virtualization, time dilation,
architectural simulation, and slack simulation to provide scalable
emulation of hypothetical systems.  We also describe virtualization-based
full-system measurement and monitoring tools to aid in using the proposed
system for co-design of high-performance computing system software and
architectural features for future systems.  Finally, we provide a
description of the implementation strategy and status of the proposed
system.