ByteLabs

The second silicon implementation of an extended EnCore processor is a test-chip codenamed Castle, fabricated in a generic 90nm CMOS process. All of the EnCore test chips are named after hills in Edinburgh; Castle is named after the rock on which Edinburgh Castle is built.

The Castle chip contains an extended version of the EnCore processor, together with a 32KB 4-way set-associative Instruction Cache, and a 32KB 4-way set-associative Data Cache. It is embedded within a system-on-chip (SoC) design that provides a generic 32-bit memory interface, as well as interrupt, clocks and reset signals.

Our paper about Cycle-Accurate Performance Modelling in an Ultra-Fast Just-In-Time Dynamic Binary Translation Instruction Set Simulator got accepted for SAMOS 2010.

Here is the abstract:

“Instruction set simulators (ISS) are vital tools for compiler and processor architecture design space exploration and verification. State-of-the-art simulators using just-in-time (JIT) dynamic binary translation (DBT) techniques are able to simulate complex embedded processors at speeds above 500 MIPS. However, these functional ISS do not provide microarchitectural observability. In contrast, low-level cycle-accurate ISS are too slow to simulate full-scale applications, forcing developers to revert to FPGA-based simulations. In this paper we demonstrate that it is possible to run ultra-high speed cycle-accurate instruction set simulations surpassing FPGA-based simulation speeds. We extend the JIT DBT engine of our ISS and augment JIT generated code with a verified cycle-accurate processor model. Our approach can model any microarchitectural configuration, does not rely on prior profiling, instrumentation, or compilation, and works for all binaries targeting a state-of-the-art embedded processor implementing the ARCompact™ instruction set architecture (ISA). We achieve simulation speeds up to 63 MIPS on a standard x86 desktop computer, whilst the average cycle-count deviation is less than 1.5 % for the industry standard EEMBC and CoreMark benchmark suites.“

If you would like to read the joint paper with Tobias and Björn that I am going to present at CGO in Toronto next week, here is the place where you can get it:

Integrated Instruction Selection and Register Allocation for Compact Code Generation Exploiting Freeform Mixing of 16- and 32-bit Instructions

Johann Hari has written an excellent article about the The great bloody hole in the British election campaign – Afghanistan. This is recommended reading for everyone and should be supplemented with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

One doesn’t need to be an expert in foreign policy, politics, philosophy etc. to see that the war in Afghanistan is just wrong!

Ivan Lewis, Middle East Minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is coming to the University of Edinburgh to give a ‘lecture’ with the title ‘Why are we in Afghanistan’?

If you read what his speech is about you will soon find out that it is just a lot of war propaganda. Because elections are coming up soon people need to be persuaded of the necessity of war and that is the reason why the UK government is performing what they call a ‘roadshow’ (i.e. propaganda) to ‘inform’ (i.e. mislead) the general public.

Politicians should not abuse our Universities for such purposes and Universities should reject such ‘lectures’. Please come along to the lecture and voice your opinion about this situation.

Here is the official invitation:

“The Rt. Hon. Ivan Lewis, Middle East Minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is to give a lecture in LT 175 – Law, Old College on Thursday 25th March 2010 at 3.00 p.m. with the title “Why are we in Afghanistan?”.

The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session.

All welcome.

Seating is first-come, first-served.”

See you there…

Please support the reform of English libel law by signing the following petition – even if you are not a UK citizen. English libel laws are designed badly and do more harm than good. Here are just a few arguments why the laws need to be changed:

- English libel laws have been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee.

- These laws gag scientists, bloggers and journalists who want to discuss matters of genuine public interest (and public health!).

- These laws give rise to libel tourism, whereby the rich and the powerful (Saudi billionaires, Russian oligarchs and overseas corporations) come to London to sue writers because English libel laws are so hostile to responsible journalism. (In fact, it is exactly because English libel laws have this global impact that we welcome signatories to the petition from around the world.)

- Vested interests can use their resources to bully and intimidate those who seek to question them. The cost of a libel trial in England is 100 times more expensive than the European average and typically runs to over £1 million.

- Three separate ongoing libel cases involve myself and two medical researchers raising concerns about three medical treatments. We face losing £1 million each. In future, why would anyone else raise similar concerns? If these health matters are not reported, then the public is put at risk.

Howard Zinn, ranking amongst the top of my personal heroes has passed away this week. This is very sad news indeed – rest in peace Howard!

Mass media report that there are security issues in Haiti. Even the UN says that it first has to guarantee security before they can provide relief efforts in the country. The US military has taken over the airport and redirects flights (i.e. an airplane by doctors without borders) based on some flimsy excuses.

The situation is quite different from what you read and hear in the mass media. People in Haiti are desperate but there is NO violence – there is NO security threat. Don’t rely on our mass media, listen to journalists who are in Haiti and actually speak to Haitians instead of accepting government propaganda as the truth:

• DemocracyNow! News from the 20.01.2010
• US accused of militarizing relief effort
• Amy Goodman reporting from Haiti

It should be noted that among the first countries that provided help was Cuba and the Dominican Republic – NOT the US. In fact the US is more of a hindrance than help – it kind of makes sense – soldiers are not doctors, nor are they relief workers. So how can such a large regiment of soldiers in Haiti be of any help for the people?

We came up with another interesting project that might be of interest to you! The full title of this project is “A LLVM Backend for a Just-In-Time Compilation Engine of a state-of-the-art Instruction Set Simulator” and a detailed project specification can be found here.

If you are interested you can either contact me, Björn or Nigel.