SimNow
The SimNow simulator is a fast and configurable x86 and AMD64 dynamically-translating instruction-level platform simulator. With SimNow users can connect complex software models to form a PC platform emulation environment. SimNow emulates AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron uniprocessor and multiprocessor based systems that run several commercial operating systems and applications. Specifically, AMD and its partners use SimNow for:
- BIOS and device driver development.
- Prototyping software visible architectural changes.
- Non-intrusive and deterministic measurement and testing of software at the instruction-level.
- Modeling of future platform tradeoffs for correctness and performance analysis.
The simulator contains all the classic pieces of a PC system (CPU, memory, Northbridge, Southbridge, display, IDE drives, floppy, keyboard, and mouse support). Images (hard disk, DVD/CD-ROM, and floppy) can be created in custom sizes with the DiskTool program that is provided with the simulator. A simulation can be saved at any point in the simulation to a media file, from which the simulation can be re-run at a later time [1].
Download
simnow-linux64-4.6.2pub.tar.gz
SimNow was used by AMD to setup and test the original AGESA coreboot port for the Supermicro H8QGi+-F motherboard [2].