2 Hardware and Software Requirements

2.1 Hardware requirements

The minimum hardware requirements are:

• 64-bit Intel® Architecture processor, either Haswell or newer performance core ("big core") architecture, or Gracemont or newer efficiency core (Atom) architecture.
• VMP requires that Intel® Architecture (Intel® VT-x) is enabled in UEFI/BIOS and visible to the VMXMON kernel module.
• 16 GB of RAM.
• 8 GB of disk space.

More RAM and/or disk is often necessary, depending on the requirements of the simulated machine.

For best performance, we recommend:

• A host with least 32 GB of RAM.
• A host processor with a high clock speed, 4GHz or more.
• At least two host cores per simulation running simultaneously (in particular, check processor allocations in containers and virtual machines).
• Since a more recent host processor will run faster than older generations, try to use the most modern Intel® Architecture processor possible.
• Use fast local storage for the simulator swap.
• Faster memory (RAM) can help, but is not as important as the processor core itself.

For maximum performance when simulating Intel® Architecture targets, the Intel® Simics® Simulator can use virtualization (also known as VMP or VMXMON). The use of virtualization requires an Intel processor with Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) for IA-32, Intel® 64 and Intel® Architecture (Intel® VT-x).

• The best performance from virtualization is obtained when the host is as close to the target as possible. In particular, simulating an Intel® Architecture Server is usually best done on an Intel® Architecture Server host of the most recent generation.
• Note that running Intel® Simics® simulations in a virtual machine typically prevents Intel® VT-x from being used or cause it to run with a significant reduction in speed. If isolation between simulator instances is desired, use containers on Linux instead as they normally allow the use of custom drivers on the host.

2.2 Linux (64-bit)

Run Time Requirements

A modern Linux distribution (1), with at least

• GLIBC 2.22 or later.
• GTK 2.24 or later — for the GUI.

Supported examples are Suse Linux Enterprise Server 12 (and newer) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (and newer).

When running Simics with a user provided Python, or when using Simics as a Python module, Python version 3.10 or later is required.

Model Builder Requirements

• GCC 6.3 compiler. Recommended to use GCC 12 or later.
• Typical GNU-based development environment, with GNU Make 4.1 or later.
• Optional: CMake version 3.4 or later.
• For SystemC*, see footnote (2).

2.3 Microsoft Windows (64-bit)

Run Time Requirements

• Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, or later.
• Visual Studio run-time libraries: https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe.
• Simics Base and the libraries it ships are built for the Windows Universal C Runtime (UCRT).

When running Simics with a user provided Python, or when using Simics as a Python module, Python version 3.10 or later is required.

Model Builder Requirements

• MinGW GCC 6.3 or Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 compiler (3). Recommended to use MinGW GCC 12 or later, built for UCRT and POSIX threads.
• MinGW development environment, with GNU Make 4.1 or later.
• Optional: CMake version 3.4 or later.
• For SystemC*, see footnote (2).

2.4 Python requirements

Simics needs a Python installation to run. The minimum required Python version is 3.10. A few Python packages are also required to run Simics. These are downloaded and installed automatically when setting up a Simics project (4), into a project local standard Python virtual environment.

If no Python is available on the host, a Python installation is provided in Simics package 1033. If that is installed, Simics will normally find and use Python from there.