xref: /gem5/README

This is release m5_1.1 of the M5 simulator.

This file contains brief "getting started" instructions.  For more
information, see http://m5.eecs.umich.edu.  If you have questions,
please send mail to m5sim-users@lists.sourceforge.net.

WHAT'S INCLUDED (AND NOT)
-------------------------

The basic source release includes these subdirectories:
 - m5: the simulator itself
 - m5-test: regression tests
 - ext: less-common external packages needed to build m5
 - alpha-system: source for Alpha console and PALcode

To run full-system simulations, you will need compiled console,
PALcode, and kernel binaries and one or more disk images.  These files
are collected in a separate archive, m5_system_1.1.tar.bz2.  This file
is included on the CD release, or you can download it separately from
Sourceforge.

M5 supports Linux 2.4/2.6, FreeBSD, and the proprietary Compaq/HP
Tru64 version of Unix. We are able to distribute Linux and FreeBSD
bootdisks, but we are unable to distribute bootable disk images of
Tru64 Unix. If you have a Tru64 license and are interested in
obtaining disk images, contact us at m5-dev@eecs.umich.edu.

The CD release includes a few extra goodies, such as a tar file
containing doxygen-generated HTML documentation (html-docs.tar.gz), a
set of Linux source patches (linux_m5-2.6.8.1.diff), and the scons
program needed to build M5.  If you do not have the CD, the same HTML
documentation is available online at http://m5.eecs.umich.edu/docs,
the Linux source patches are available at
http://m5.eecs.umich.edu/dist/linux_m5-2.6.8.1.diff, and the scons
program is available from http://www.scons.org.

WHAT'S NEEDED
-------------
- GCC version 3.3 or newer
- Python 2.3 or newer
- SCons 0.96.1 or newer (see http://www.scons.org)

WHAT'S RECOMMENDED
------------------
- MySQL (for statistics complex statistics storage/retrieval)
- Python-MysqlDB (for statistics analysis) 

GETTING STARTED
---------------

There are two different build targets and three optimizations levels:

Target:
-------
ALPHA_SE - Syscall emulation simulation
ALPHA_FS - Full system simulation

Optimization:
-------------
m5.debug - debug version of the code with tracing and without optimization
m5.opt   - optimized version of code with tracing
m5.fast  - optimized version of the code without tracing and asserts

Different targets are built in different subdirectories of m5/build.
Binaries with the same target but different optimization levels share
the same directory.  Note that you can build m5 in any directory you
choose;p just configure the target directory using the 'mkbuilddir'
script in m5/build.

The following steps will build and test the simulator.  The variable
"$top" refers to the top directory where you've unpacked the files,
i.e., the one containing the m5, m5-test, and ext directories.  If you
have a multiprocessor system, you should give scons a "-j N" argument (like
make) to run N jobs in parallel.

To build and test the syscall-emulation simulator:

	cd $top/m5/build
	scons ALPHA_SE/test/opt/quick

This process takes under 10 minutes on a dual 3GHz Xeon system (using
the '-j 4' option).

To build and test the full-system simulator:

1. Unpack the full-system binaries from m5_system_1.1.tar.bz2.  (See
   above for directions on obtaining this file if you don't have it.)
   This package includes disk images and kernel, palcode, and console
   binaries for Linux and FreeBSD.
2. Edit the SYSTEMDIR search path in $top/m5-test/SysPaths.py to
   include the path to your local copy of the binaries.
3. In $top/m5/build, run "scons ALPHA_FS/test/opt/quick".

This process also takes under 10 minutes on a dual 3GHz Xeon system
(again using the '-j 4' option).