SPEC 2006

This document aims to provide instructions to create a gem5-compatible disk image containing the SPEC 2006 benchmark suite and also to provide necessary configuration files.

Building the Disk Image

Creating a disk-image for SPEC 2006 requires the benchmark suite ISO file. More info about SPEC 2006 can be found here.

In this tutorial, we assume that the file CPU2006v1.0.1.iso contains the SPEC benchmark suite, and we provide the scripts that are made specifically for SPEC 2006 version 1.0.1. Throughout the this document, the root folder is src/spec-2006/. All commands should be run from the assumed root folder.

The layout of the folder after the scripts are run is as follows,

spec-2006/
  |___ gem5/                                   # gem5 folder
  |
  |___ disk-image/
  |      |___ shared/
  |      |___ spec-2006/
  |             |___ spec-2006-image/
  |             |      |___ spec-2006          # the disk image will be generated here
  |             |___ spec-2006.json            # the Packer script
  |             |___ CPU2006v1.0.1.iso         # SPEC 2006 ISO (add here)
  |
  |___ configs
  |      |___ system
  |      |___ run_spec.py                      # gem5 config file
  |
  |___ vmlinux-4.19.83                         # download link below
  |
  |___ README.md

First, to build m5 (required for interactions between gem5 and the guest):

git clone https://gem5.googlesource.com/public/gem5
cd gem5
git checkout origin/develop
cd util/m5
scons build/x86/out/m5

We use Packer, an open-source automated disk image creation tool, to build the disk image. In the root folder,

cd disk-image
wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/1.6.0/packer_1.6.0_linux_amd64.zip #(download the packer binary)
unzip packer_1.6.0_linux_amd64.zip
./packer validate spec-2006/spec-2006.json #validate the Packer script
./packer build spec-2006/spec-2006.json

The path to the disk image is spec-2006/spec-2006-image/spec-2006. Please refer to this tutorial for more information about the scripts used in this document.

Linux Kernel

The following link contains the compiled Linux kernel that was tested by running gem5-20 with SPEC 2006,

• vmlinux-4.19.83

gem5 Configuration Scripts

gem5 scripts which configure the system and run the simulation are available in configs/. The main script run_spec.py expects following arguments:

usage: run_spec.py [-h] [-l] [-z] kernel disk cpu benchmark size

-h: show this help message and exit.

-l, --no-copy-logs: optional, to not copy SPEC run logs to the host system, logs are copied by default, and are available in the result folder.

-z, --allow-listeners: optional, to turn on GDB listening ports, the ports are off by default.

kernel: required, a positional argument specifying the path to the Linux kernel.

disk: required, a positional argument specifying the path to the disk image containing SPEC 2006 benchmark suite.

cpu: required, a positional argument specifying the name of either a detailed CPU model or KVM CPU model.

The available CPU models are,

cpu	Corresponding CPU model in gem5
kvm
o3	DerivO3CPU
atomic	AtomicSimpleCPU
timing	TimingSimpleCPU

benchmark: required, a positional argument specifying the name of the SPEC 2006 workload to run.

size: required, a positional argument specifying the input data size, must be one of {test, train, ref}.

Assume the compiled Linux kernel is available in the assumed root folder, the following is an example of running a SPEC 2006 workload in full system mode, gem5/build/X86/gem5.opt --outdir [path to the gem5 output directory] configs/run_spec.py -z vmlinux-4.19.83 disk-image/spec-2006/spec-2006-image/spec-2006 atomic 403.gcc test

Working Status

Status of these benchmarks runs with respect to gem5-20, linux kernel version 4.19.83 and gcc version 7.5.0 can be found here