[Barrelfish-users] building an arm kernel of barrelfish for gem5

[Samuel Hitz]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your advice.

I'll have a closer look at the way gem5 boots the provided sample ARM
fullsystem files. As for your second point, that's one purpose of the
thesis to make Barrelfish support the ARMv7 gem5 simulates. I'll clearly
first target a single core system, before moving on to more complex setups.

Best,

Samuel

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:55 PM, Tim Harris (RESEARCH) <
tharris at microsoft.com> wrote:

>  Hi Samuel,****
>
> ** **
>
> I remember talking about this with Matt Horsnell from ARM some time ago,
> though I’m not sure if they’ve had a chance to look at BF-on-ARM yet.****
>
> ** **
>
> The “molly” tool is used to wrap up the kernel and modules into a single
> bootable image.  I wrote it because x64 gem5 was quite tailored to Linux,
> and expected to load a single kernel passed on the simulator’s command
> line.  I think that, for Linux, that kernel would proceed to load modules
> from a hard disk attached to the simulated machine.  ****
>
> ** **
>
> The two initial things I’d suggest investigating are:****
>
> ** **
>
> **·         **Checking what methods gem5 supports for loading kernels and
> modules on ARM.  E.g., when booting Linux, then where do things come from?
>
> ****
>
> **·         **Checking that the kinds of ARM system that gem5 can model
> fit with the kinds of ARM system supported by BF.****
>
> ** **
>
> It may also be worth checking whether QEMU supports the same kind of ARM
> system that you wish to model.  If so, then you could start off using QEMU
> (for a faster debugging cycle), and then switch over to gem5 later.  Also,
> I’d suggest getting a simple non-heterogenous system booting and running
> first, before starting on the more complex big.LITTLE setting.****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks,****
>
> ** **
>
> Tim****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* Samuel Hitz [mailto:samuel.hitz at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 27 February 2012 13:01
> *To:* Tim Harris (RESEARCH)
> *Cc:* barrelfish-users at lists.inf.ethz.ch
> *Subject:* Fwd: building an arm kernel of barrelfish for gem5****
>
> ** **
>
> CCing the public barrelfish list.****
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Samuel Hitz* <samuel.hitz at gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 9:21 AM
> Subject: building an arm kernel of barrelfish for gem5
> To: tharris at microsoft.com
>
>
> Hi Tim,****
>
> ** **
>
> I'm a CS student at ETH Zurich and for my Bachelor Thesis, I try to port
> Barrelfish to a heterogeneous ARM multicore system (big.LITTLE) using the
> gem5 simulator. Now the first step is to build a Barrelfish kernel suitable
> for the use with gem5. I saw on the wiki, that you did this already for
> x86. Now my question is, what must be modified in the build process to get
> an ARM kernel for gem5?****
>
> I saw you're using 'molly' in order to build the kernel. How is this
> applicable to build an ARM kernel for gem5? What do I have to rewrite? Or
> is it just a matter of building an ARM Barrelfish tree and run 'make
> m5_kernel'?****
>
> ** **
>
> Thank you for your help.****
>
> ** **
>
> Best,****
>
> ** **
>
> Samuel****
>
> ** **
>
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