OOOSIM: Open Source Out-of-Order Core Simulator for Teaching Computer Architecture

This paper presents an open source out-of-order core simulator, OOOSIM, for effectively teaching computer architecture students. The novelty of the idea lies in introducing the students to the open source development paradigm whilst making them learn the fundamental concepts of computer architecture such as out-of-order execution, in-order commitment and the impact of cache misses and speculative load execution. OOOSIM allows students to change hardware configuration parameters and to conduct a performance analysis of how various parameters such as issue width, reservation station, re-order buffer and cache size affect processor throughputs. We plan to introduce this as a teaching tool for teachers of computer architecture and alongside that encourage them to give students programming assignments for extending the features of this open source simulator.