Interconnect Simulation for Multiprocessor Systems

Course: CE-4302 Computer Architecture II Institution: Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica Students: Esteban Chinchilla Rodriguez, Albert Vega Camacho, Abraham Venegas Mayorga Semester: I-2025

📌 Project Overview

This project main objective is to apply the concepts of computer architecture II to the design and implementation of a simulation model of an interconnect as part of a multiprocessor (MP) system, in order to perform a quantitative and qualitative analysis of performance under different arbitration/communication schemes.

🧩 System Features

• Implemented in C++ using multithreading capabilities (C++20).

• Developed and compiled using g++ 13.3.0 on Linux (Ubuntu).

• Interface created using Qt Creator.

• Graphics were made with plotly in Python.

• Includes support for two arbitration schemes:

  • FIFO (ignores QoS).
  • QoS-based priority.

• Simulation of message transfer times and memory access delays.

• Step-by-step (stepping) simulation support.

• Final report includes statistics for bandwidth, traffic, and amount of messages of each PE.

🧱 Project Structure

Each processing element simulates a private instruction memory and cache and communicates with a shared memory via the Interconnect using the following message types:

• WRITE_MEM
• READ_MEM
• BROADCAST_INVALIDATE
• INV_ACK
• INV_COMPLETE
• READ_RESP
• WRITE_RESP

📂 Dependencies and Includes

The following standard headers are used in the project:

#include <iostream>
#include <mutex>
#include <cstdint>
#include <cstring>
#include <vector>
#include <variant>
#include <array>

🧪 Workloads

Two distinct workloads were developed to test each arbitration scheme. Each workload uses all 8 PEs, with each executing at least 10 instructions.

📊 Output and Visualization

After each workload execution, the system generates:

• Bandwidth graphs.
• Traffic charts.
• Amount of messages of each PE

Requirements:

• Ubuntu Linux OS
• Qt Creator (recommended for building the interface)
• g++ 13.3.0 or compatible compiler
• Python 3.8.10

⚙️ Compilation Instructions

En la terminal corra los siguientes comandos antes de iniciar.

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

Make sure that you have instaled the g++ compiler.

g++ --version

If not, execute this command to install it.

sudo apt install g++

Make sure that you have installed python.

python3 --version

To install qtcreator run the following commands.

sudo apt install qtcreator qtbase5-dev

sudo apt install build-essential cmake

sudo apt install python3-pyqt5

Install the library for the graphic with the following commands (if you already have the pip package, don't execute the first command).

sudo apt install python python3-pip

pip install plotly

Right click on the executable file called main, then click on properties and click on the permissions tab, and check on "Allow executable file as program". Then type the following commands on the terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

sudo apt install gcc-13 g++-13

In the terminal on the main.py file:

/usr/bin/python3 main.py