FireSim

FireSim is a cycle-accurate, FPGA-accelerated scale-out computer system simulation platform developed in the Berkeley Architecture Research Group in the EECS Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

FireSim is capable of simulating from one to thousands of multi-core compute nodes, derived from open target-RTL, with an optional cycle-accurate network simulation tying them together. FireSim runs in public cloud environments like AWS EC2 F1, removing the high capex traditionally involved in large-scale FPGA-based simulation. To learn more, see our ISCA 2018 paper, which was selected as one of IEEE Micro’s “Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences” for 2018.

FireSim is useful both for datacenter architecture research as well as running many single-node architectural experiments in parallel on FPGAs. By harnessing a standardized host platform and providing a large amount of automation/tooling, FireSim drastically simplifies the process of building and deploying large-scale FPGA-based hardware simulations. Under the hood, FireSim uses MIDAS to generate bit-exact models from ASIC RTL, such as SoC designs generated by Rocket Chip.

For more information, see the following resources: