Virtutech Commercializes SimICS
by Peter Magnusson
The SimICS simulation-based development tool was commercialized
in 1998, with rights of development and exploitation being licensed
to Virtutech AB, the first formal spin-off company in SICS’ history.
Software and hardware designers of high-end computer systems that
play a key role in emerging complex information systems, ranging
from database engines to telecom/datacom transaction-oriented
systems, lack adequate debugging tools both as far as functionality
and performance issues are concerned. Such tools would drastically
reduce time-to-market thus improving competitiveness in a fundamental
way.
Developed in the computer architecture group at SICS over a period
of several years, SimICS is a “system level instruction set simulator”.
It is a specialized development tool for computer architects and
operating system developers that models a target computer at the
level of individual instructions. It offers unique benefits in
high-end computer system design work beyond traditional tools
and methods. For example, SimICS can run a realistic commercial
workload in a fully virtualized system, allowing perfectly repeatable
measurements that can track bugs that violate specifications regarding
function as well as performance.
Virtutech specializes in high-end full-system simulation technology.
In the brief period since opening its doors in the summer of 1998,
Virtutech has signed a series of key strategic customer agreements,
including with Sun Microsystems, Ericsson, and Hewlett-Packard.
“The simulator group that founded Virtutech is one of the world’s
foremost research groups in system level simulation”, according
to David W. Yen, vice president and general manager of enterprise
server products for Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Sun has worked with
them for many years, and it is good to see they have discovered
the commercial potential of their work and are beginning to capitalize
on its worth.”
SimICS is now marketed under the label Virtutech SimICS, and is
the first product sold by Virtutech, in addition to specialized
consulting services. Virtutech expects to have a profitable first
year of operation, and 1999 is already “sold out” with customer
projects.
“The tools and technology that we provide customers are unique
in the commercial space,” says Virtutech CEO Peter Magnusson.
“Historically, this class of technology has been restricted to
in-house proprietary efforts, deemed too sensitive and strategic
to be outsourced. We have pioneered the concept of a specialized,
independent company in the field. The technical and economical
benefits of our specialization are significant. In todays competitive
world, no stone remains unturned in improving quality and time
to market. Our first customers are exemplary leading edge companies,
early adopters of new technologies and processes.”
It began with Architecture and a Misunderstanding
The work leading up to SimICS originated in computer architecture
and operating systems research at SICS in the late 1980s and early
1990s. In projects led by Seif Haridi, Erik Hagersten, and Andrzej
Ciepilewski, it was observed that the existing simulation techniques
failed to capture significant characteristics of ‘real’ commercial
systems. A tradition of focusing on scientific workloads had led
to a general feeling in the field of computer architecture that
available benchmarks and techniques had systematic methodological
weaknesses.
A computer architect uses simulation to provide input into his
or her architecture models. Much of computer architecture involves
careful optimization of common cases, perhaps to the detriment
of less common events. The relative frequencies of events in real
uses of computers are thus important both to guide design choices,
and to predict their relative impact. Because of limitations in
existing simulation techniques in the late 1980s, computer architects
in academia were restricted to models driven by (a) scientific,
rather than commercial, programs, and (b) only so-called ‘user-level’
events, as opposed to operating system involvement. By contrast,
there were indications that typical commercial workloads, such
as large databases, behaved rather differently. In later years,
this was confirmed by detailed studies performed by IBM, among
others.
The first directions in the work leading to SimICS was based on
a misunderstanding. An existing, ground breaking simulation environment
developed by Robert Bedichek at the University of Washington was
extended to support a multiprocessor system and to mimic real
devices of a prototype research architecture, the SICS DDM. The
first programmer on the project developed simulator device models
sufficiently accurate to boot and run completely unmodified operating
systems, including commercial on-board firmware. This strategy
was chosen on the - incorrect - assumption that it was common
practice. The strategy proved cumbersome, and eventually it became
evident that SICS was the first open research facility to seriously
undertake such a programming task. The early programmers on the
project were confident that the task was not only feasible, but
would take around six months or so. The obvious benefits of running
a real, commercial workload, led a series of research managers
at SICS to support continued work in that direction.
Some six calendar years, twenty man years, and several hundred
thousand lines of code later, in 1997, the simulation group in
the Computer and Network Architectures (CNA) group at SICS finally
succeeded in the original goal: booting a commercial operating
system (Solaris 2.6) on a simulated Sun Microsystems server (sun4m
architecture). This was the first known occasion of an academic
group running an unmodified commercial operating system in a fully
simulated environment.
In the meantime, the architecture research at SICS achieved great
success, and significantly influenced commercial designs. SimICS
has followed in the wake of SICS computer architecture results,
and has now also taken the step into the commercial field.
The simulation group at SICS eventually grew to five people, all
of whom became founding employees of Virtutech: Magnus Christensson,
Fredrik Larsson, Peter Magnusson, Andreas Moestedt, and Bengt
Werner. The board of directors of Virtutech include Bo Hedfors,
an earlier chairman of the SICS Foundation, and Stig Larsson,
the current chairman, as well as Per Stenström, professor of computer
architecture at the Chalmers University of Technology.
Other than those already mentioned, significant contributions
to the success of simulation work at SICS over the years were
made by Torbjörn “tege” Granlund, Anders Landin, and David Samuelsson.
Virtutech is located in downtown Stockholm. For more information,
see http://www.virtutech.se and http://www.simics.com
Please contact:
Peter Magnusson - Virtutech AB
Tel +46 8 690 0720
E-mail: info@virtutech.se
