Simics Training Release Notes

1 Introduction

This document identifies important information for the Simics Training package for Simics 6. All users of this specific package should review this document carefully.

2 Changes Since Version 6.0.0

The following is a list of changes since the initial 6.0.0 release.

• 6.0.pre37 (build 6272)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • The code for the m-compute module was restructured to test all variants of the module implementation on every build (bug #SIMICS-21561). The Workshop 02 instructions were updated to reflect the new code structure.
    • Fixed issue in the Intel Simics New User Training lab 003 (a bad wait-for string). Also some fixing some typos.

• 6.0.pre36 (build 6268)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Updated New User Training Lab 003 PDF.

• 6.0.pre35 (build 6266)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • The code for the m-control module was restructured to also test the stalling version on every build (SIMICS-21573). Workshop 02 instructions were updated to reflect the new structure.

• 6.0.pre34 (build 6259)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Corrected interface calls in New User Training lab 004-C.

• 6.0.pre33 (build 6247)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Lab 001 updated to set up project using the Intel Simics Package Manager.
    • Replacing the Eclipse system panel with a system panel drawn in a graphics console.
    • Use of the Eclipse GUI removed from all New User Training labs.
    • Fixed issued where workshop-02, script 002, did not work due to a missing script file.

• 6.0.pre32 (build 6215)

  • Sample Device for package priorities
    • First release of the sample-device-pkg-prio module. It is used in the Simics training to illustrate package priorities.
  • Simics Training Materials
    • New User Training target binaries recompiled. Debug information lines up with the updated source code (new copyright headers).

• 6.0.pre31 (build 6195)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Updating scripts to use the BIOS version they have been designed with (instead of a possibly newer one used by default by the QSP).

• 6.0.pre28 (build 6163)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • New User Training labs PDF documents - restored document bookmarks.
    • New User Training lab 003 updated to include the devs and list-object-references commands.
    • New User Training lab 004 and 005 replaced the deprecated trace-io and break-io commands with bp.bank.*.
    • Workshop 01 instructions updated to point at the correct download location for the target software used.

• 6.0.pre27 (build 6153)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • New User Training labs updated to avoid deprecated CLI commands and match the updated PCIe setup of the QSP target.

• 6.0.pre26 (build 6142)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • The package no longer contains .pyc files, and now requires Simics-Base version 6.0.114 or later.

• 6.0.pre25 (build 6140)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Fixed minor typos in Lab 006 and 007: comparison type for reverse debug, and user/root prompts in ssh window.

• 6.0.pre22 (build 6135)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Fixed model builder lab 002, section D.
    • Added workshop-02, a tutorial on hardware modeling in Simics, using DML, Python, and CLI scripts.

• 6.0.pre18 (build 6110)

  • Common
    • Simics no longer comes with documentation in PDF format.

• 6.0.pre17 (build 6106)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Updates to workshop-01 materials, using the updated simple-cache-tool from Simics base 6.0.89.

• 6.0.pre14 (build 6103)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Added workshop-01 materials, providing a step-by-step workshop for using the Simics simulator for workload characterization, cache simulation, and hardware access profiling.

• 6.0.pre12 (build 6086)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Simics New User Training lab 003 updated with new screenshots, as well as fixing some small issues in the lab.

• 6.0.pre11 (build 6082)

  • Common
    • Documentation in HTML format has been added.

• 6.0.pre10 (build 6080)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Simics New User Training labs 001 and 002 updated with fresh screenshots.
    • Simics New User Training labs 001 and 002 updated with some additional lab steps - looking at release notes, searching for commands, and other small fixes.

• 6.0.pre9 (build 6079)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Training labs updated to match Simics Base 6.0.71 and Simics Eclipse 6.0.26, along with QSP 6.0.37 and QSP Clear Linux 6.0.6.
    • The source code for the training devices ported to DML 1.4.
    • Simics Model Builder training labs modules 000, 001, and 002 added.

• 6.0.pre6 (build 6044)

  • Common
    • Fixed a problem on Windows where the installer still asked for the Model Builder key (bug #SIMINT-1236).

• 6.0.pre4 (build 6033)

  • Common
    • Support for Python 2.7 has been removed. Simics now only embeds a Python 3 interpreter.

• 6.0.pre3 (build 6030)

  • Common
    • The separation of source code into separate packages has been removed. Source code is now included directly into each package.
    • The installers for Linux and macOS have been updated. Support for fallback mode of decryption keys has been removed.
  • Simics Training Materials
    • Improvements to all New User Training labs. Only lab instructions affected, no changes to the training scripts or models.
    • Updated training to match QSP-Clear-Linux 6.0.3, QSP-x86 6.0.16, and Simics 6.0.19.

• 6.0.pre1 (build 6022)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • First really useful release of Simics Training for Simics 6.
    • Updated training to match QSP Clear Linux version 6.0.3 along with QSP version 6.0.15 (or later).
    • Updated devices in the training_card subsystem to have more metadata on banks and ports.
    • Updated training_card design to use Simics 6 hierarchical objects and object arrays.
    • Updated all scripts and models used in the New User training to Python 3.
    • Updated scripts to use auto-login parameters from the QSP target scripts.

• 6.0.pre0 (build 6011)

  • Simics Training Materials
    • Removing temporary Clear Linux disk images from Training packages. Training package requires the installation of the QSP-Clear-Linux image package to function correctly. It also means that the script targets/simics-user-training/800-qsp-clearlinux.simics has been removed from the training package.
    • Splitting off model builder training scripts into its own target directory, targets/simics-builder-training/. This enables the training for model building and new user to evolve in parallel.
    • Initial version of the training package. Includes model code and scripts, as well as target code, for doing the Simics New User Training labs. At this point, the labs are not updated to match the ClearLinux images.
    • Switching from old Yocto Linux to new ClearLinux.

3 Changes in version 6

4 Limitations

This section briefly describes the known limitations of the Simics Training package. Please refer to section 5 for a more technical description.

For model oriented packages, additional limitations may be found in the model target guides.

5 Detailed List of Limitations

This section describes in detail the known limitations of the Simics Training package. Please refer to section 4 for a more general description.

A register or field marked as Not implemented is present with read-write semantics but has no side effects on simulation. A register marked as Not implemented (design limitation) has the same semantics as a "Not implemented" register and there is no plan to extend the model with this functionality. A register with Lack of documentation has not been implemented because there is no available documentation describing its semantics.