1 Breakout thoughts (compiled with N. Carter): Where will RAMP be in 3-5 Years (What is RAMP, where is it going?) Is it still RAMP if it is mapping onto something other than FPGA? Can we revert back to software simulation? Is RAMP cost effective with current Parallel HW (different 5 years ago). Now possible to build a 1K system with blades:  ex Niagara has 64 threads - could simulate 1K cores with 16 blades? Probably can get a 50 CPU cluster for "industry cost" of BEE3, $50K. Maybe $1K per core.

2 Breakout thoughts: On Clusters: For thoughput limited runs (lots of independent simulation runs) - ex: generating 3000 data points  then a cluster with many CPUs each working separately For low latency single run - network latency will dominate and result in low emulation performance. In all of these “software” approaches:  There is a big issue of the mismatch between “host” and “target”. For good matches (ISA, network, memory system) can be efficient.  FPGA because of fine grain configurability largely avoids this issue. But are these processor based emulations still "RAMP" systems?

3 Breakout thoughts: Perhaps what makes it “RAMP” is the design representation not the host. There may be something to using RAMP methodology and models for software (and other) implementations  As it is too easy to cheat in software only models - starting from a “hardware” model (with explicit interconnect, etc.) will help  Can Re"host" the emulation later to FPGAs. Has extra benefits of:  avoid the bother or cost of FPGA HW initially, and  Help in verification by having two implementations Simple Scalar has been successful party because it runs on anything.

4 Breakout thoughts: In order to pull this off need a higher level of abstraction for specifying units:  1. Library approach (users want parameterized high-level blocks)  2. modeling language (builders of blocks want a common language for both HW/SW implementations) Can C-gates help? 3-5 years RAMP will need to transition into "tools”  Right now project is still investigating the space of bag of tricks  At some point must transition to being much easier to use (a tool not a PhD thesis) Liberty as an example for RDL! (but has a steep learning curve!)