Compiling ALPHA support on gem5

gem5_alpha.md

Compiling ALPHA support on gem5

To build support for ALPHA on gem5 you essentially need to compile v19 in the correct environment, which can be difficult due to Python incompatibilities. Here are the steps I took:

git clone https://github.com/ArturKlauser/gem5-dev

Apply this patch to gem5-dev/docker/gem5-dev.sh:

-  echo "building gem5 ARM binary ..."
-  cd "${sourcedir}" || exit 1
-  # Building inst-constrs-3.cc is a memory hog and can easily run the
-  # container out of resources if done in parallel with other compiles. So
-  # we first build it alone and then build the rest.
-  local cmd="scons build/ARM/arch/arm/generated/inst-constrs-3.o"
-  echo "${cmd}"
-  ${cmd}
+  echo "building gem5 ALPHA binary ..."
   # Now build the rest in parallel.
-  cmd="scons -j $(nproc) build/ARM/gem5.opt"
+  cmd="scons -j 4 build/ALPHA/gem5.opt"

Run the following:

docker build -t gem5-dev gem5-dev/docker
git clone https://gem5.googlesource.com/public/gem5
export GEM5_WORKDIR=~/gem5
cd gem5
git checkout v19.0.0.0 # Last release that contains ALPHA
docker run --rm -v $GEM5_WORKDIR:/gem5 -it gem5-dev bash
# Inside bash:
	scons -j $(nproc) build/ALPHA/gem5.opt

If scons reports an error about Python headers not being available, try rm -rf build/.scons_config build/sconsign.dblite.