Flow-Based Simulation Methodology

This paper presents flow-based simulation, a new methodology for evaluating novel and intricate computer system designs. The main idea of flow-based simulation is to keep the history of every simulated memory element, instead of its latest value, to make it time bonded so that sliding the time forward and backward changes the state of the system accordingly. Having this opportunity, new architectural designs can be evaluated in terms of timing and energy by implementing only a functional simulation. Due to serial execution, the process of the design in a flow-based simulation is traceable and easy to understand. As a result, comparing with cycle-driven and event-driven techniques, complicated algorithms can be evaluated much easier. Flow-based simulation simplifies the burden of the timing simulation, and consequently leads to faster development and simulation time.