[Qemu-devel] libqemu for use in parallel-language based simulator

[Sean Halle]

Hi,
   We’re trying to use QEMU as a library in our 
research. We have created a parallel language for 
simulating parallel activities. The language 
controls the suspension and re-animation of 
threads it creates, in such a way that physical 
memory contents remains consistent with the order of events in simulation time.

   We want to simulate processors, using QEMU as 
their behavior. This means the language has to 
control suspending QEMU and re-animating it. 
Which works fine if QEMU is called as a library, 
in one of the language’s threads.

   Libvirt won't work ­ our language doesn’t 
have control over OS threads ­ and the overhead 
of OS threads is around 50x higher than our 
language, even more on larger machines (We just 
submitted a paper measuring the difference).

   libqemu appears to be the heart of what we 
need.  Just the core functionality of a 
processor's instruction-set.  We will need a few 
thousand or so separate processor-states, similar 
to how COREMU has multiple processor states.
   Searches for other tools that use libqemu 
this way haven't yielded results..  We're just in 
the planning stages of adding QEMU..  any help on 
problems we're likely to encounter, or places 
that others may have used libqemu by itself, will be greatly appreciated,

Thanks, Sean