Building a Design Support Tool for Superscalar Processors and Its Case Studies

We will describe Paratool, a support tool to efficiently design superscalar processors, and its case studies. Paratool is a software tool that predicts performance of superscalar processors being designed, using execution traces on a sequential processor, and it runs on a sequential processor. It can measure almost all microarchitectures for superscalar processors. It can measure an ideal microarchitecture, whose resources are limitless. Furthermore, we will describe the result of case studies and report findings designers tend to overlook. This support tool is useful not only for architecture design, but also for tuning of compilers/application software and education in universities. © 2001 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 32(12): 67–79, 2001