Re: [discuss] Support for reverse-execution

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 09:41:58PM -0400, Paul Schlie wrote:
> - Supporting HW co-simulation is certainly interesting, but fundamentally
>   no different; it only extends the definition of "state" typically by
>   literally exposing some of the logical CPU/I/O/Peripheral/outside-world
>   state in various levels of details depending on the goals of the model,
>   and/or simulation itself. (but would guess likely beyond the near term
>   goals of attempting to enable GDB support for basic reversible execution?)

Why should it be?  This is another reason that I consider the simulator
a perfectly reasonable place to have the logic.

Frank has contributed that sid would more readily support the sort of
snapshot-based reconstruction that you're talking about (thanks Frank).
I think that allowing the target to provide infrun with a view in which
"single step backwards" is possible and then implementing that under
the covers in the target stack would still be the way to go - but I
don't think that's a legitimate objection to supporting a smart
simulator which does it internally.

When someone implements reversible debugging in a free simulator and
wants to integrate that with GDB, they'll have the choice of doing the
remaining steps in their simulator or in GDB.

>   [And suspect you'll find that most HW savvy simulation environments have
>    very limited if any support for "reversible" simulation, beyond
>    checkpoint-restart. As on a cycle by cycle basis, tracking and recording
>    incremental state changes would typically cripple the simulation, and
>    potentially even exhaust disk storage for complex models, but limited
>    forms do exist, and are useful.]

You might want to read the papers on the specific simulator we're
discussing using as a starting point; you can find the white paper on
Virtutech's web site.  Under the covers, of course, it's probably
checkpoint based.  But it's efficient, automatic checkpointing such
that it can provide a reversible view over useful periods of time. 
Complete with "HW savvy" details.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC