Report Number: CSL-TR-94-631
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: SimOS: A Fast Operating System Simulation Environment
Author: Rosenblum, Mendel
Author: Varadarajan, Mani
Date: July 1994
Abstract: In this paper we describe techniques for building a software development environment for operating system software. These techniques allow an operating system to be run at user-level on a general-purpose operating system such as System V R4 Unix. The approach used in this work is to simulate a machine's hardware using services provided by the underlying operating system. We describe how to simulate the CPU using the operating system's process abstraction, the memory management unit using file mapping operations, and the I/O devices using separate processes. The techniques we present allow the simulator to run with sufficient speed and detail that workloads that exercise bugs on the real machine can be transferred and run in near real-time on the simulated machine. The speed of the simulation depends on the quantity and the cost of the simulated operations. Real programs usually run in the simulated environment at between 50% and 100% of the speed of the underyling machine. The simulation detail we provide allows an operating system running in the simulated environment to be nearly indistinguishable from the real machine from a user perspective.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/94/631/CSL-TR-94-631.pdf