A full-system simulation running gem5 is missing files - gem5

Question

I am trying to run a full system simulation of gem5, but I found that the full system file of X86 on the official website can no longer be downloaded, can someone help me？
thanks
I need a compressed package of x86 full system files“x86-system.tar.bz2”“config-x86.tar.bz2”

Answer 1

Here is a complete tutorial on how to run FS in gem5. Start by downloading your OS image:
https://www.gem5.org/documentation/gem5art/main/disks
from gem5.utils.requires import requires
from gem5.components.boards.x86_board import X86Board
from gem5.components.memory.single_channel import SingleChannelDDR3_1600
from gem5.components.cachehierarchies.ruby.mesi_two_level_cache_hierarchy import (
MESITwoLevelCacheHierarchy,
)
from gem5.components.processors.simple_switchable_processor import (
SimpleSwitchableProcessor,
)
from gem5.coherence_protocol import CoherenceProtocol
from gem5.isas import ISA
from gem5.components.processors.cpu_types import CPUTypes
from gem5.resources.resource import Resource
from gem5.simulate.simulator import Simulator
from gem5.simulate.exit_event import ExitEvent
This runs a check to ensure the gem5 binary is compiled to X86 and supports
requires(
isa_required=ISA.X86, coherence_protocol_required=CoherenceProtocol.MESI_TWO_LEVEL
)
Here we setup a MESI Two Level Cache Hierarchy.
cache_hierarchy = MESITwoLevelCacheHierarchy(
l1d_size="32KiB",
l1d_assoc=8,
l1i_size="32KiB",
l1i_assoc=8,
l2_size="256KiB",
l2_assoc=16,
num_l2_banks=1,
)
Setup the system memory.
Note, by default DDR3_1600 defaults to a size of 8GiB. However, a current
limitation with the X86 board is it can only accept memory systems up to 3GiB.
As such, we must fix the size.
memory = SingleChannelDDR3_1600("2GiB")
Here we setup the processor. This is a special switchable processor in which a starting core type and a switch core type must be specified. Once a configuration is instantiated a user may call processor.switch() to switch from the starting core types to the switch core types. In this simulation we start with TIMING cores to simulate the OS boot, then switch to the O3 cores for the command we wish to run after boot.
processor = SimpleSwitchableProcessor(
starting_core_type=CPUTypes.TIMING, switch_core_type=CPUTypes.O3, num_cores=2
)
Here we setup the board. The X86Board allows for Full-System X86 simulations.
board = X86Board(
clk_freq="3GHz", processor=processor, memory=memory, cache_hierarchy=cache_hierarchy
)
This is the command to run after the system has booted. The first m5 exit will stop the simulation so we can switch the CPU cores from TIMING to O3d and continue the simulation to run the echo command, sleep for a second, then, again, call m5 exit to terminate the simulation. After simulation has ended you may inspect m5out/system.pc.com_1.device to see the echo output.
command = (
"m5 exit;" + "echo 'This is running on O3 CPU cores.';" + "sleep 1;" + "m5 exit;"
)
Here we set the Full System workload. The set_workload function for the X86Board takes a kernel, a disk image, and, optionally, a the contents of the "readfile". In the case of the "x86-ubuntu-18.04-img", a file to be executed as a script after booting the system.
board.set_kernel_disk_workload(
kernel=Resource("x86-linux-kernel-5.4.49"),
disk_image=Resource("x86-ubuntu-18.04-img"),
readfile_contents=command,
)
Here we want override the default behavior for the first m5 exit exit event. Instead of exiting the simulator, we just want to switch the processor. The 2nd 'm5 exit' after will revert to using default behavior where the simulator run will exit.
simulator = Simulator(
board=board,
on_exit_event={
ExitEvent.EXIT: (func() for func in [processor.switch])
},
)
simulator.run()