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<h1>ALMOS distribution for the TSAR many-core </h1>
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== Summary ==

Running ALMOS on the TSAR virtual prototype requires the installation of several open-source technologies like a GCC cross-compiler for Mips (el), [http://www.soclib.fr SocLib] virtual prototyping library, [https://www-asim.lip6.fr/trac/tsar TSAR] related components, and [https://www-asim.lip6.fr/trac/systemcass SystemCASS]. To simplify the task of building and configuring a correct development environment, ALMOS comes with a stand-alone and ready-to-use distribution. 

Mainly, this distribution enables you to:
 * Port your own applications and libraries to ALMOS.
 * Run these applications on TSAR using several configurations ranging from 4 to 1024 cores.
 * Analyse the performance of your applications or the totality of the software-stack on a large-scale many-core.

Upon your needs you can also use this distribution to:
 * Validate and evaluate any hardware evolution/development in a TSAR based architectures.
 * Validate and evaluate any kernel new features or updates.
 * Experiment and develop new parallel programming libraries and run-times for a large-scale single-chip many-core.   

== Setup ==

Download the latest stable distribution from this [htdocs:almos-tsar-mipsel.tbz2 link]. Decompress the .tbz2 file:

{{{
tar jxf almos-tsar-mipsel.tbz2
}}} 

Now you have a sub-directory named ''almos-tsar-mipsel''. In the reset of this page, we refer to the absolute PATH to this directory as ''DISTRIB''.

== Start the simulation ==

Before any use of the distribution package you need to set some environment variables:

{{{
cd DISTRIB
source ./SourceMe
}}}

'''Note''': by default you have to source this file from its local directory, that is, ''DISTRIB/.'' 
  
Now got to ''DISTRIB/test/pf1'' and run ''make sim1'':

{{{
cd DISTRIB/test/pf1
make sim1
}}}

This will launch the TSAR full-system simulator with its 4 ttys terminals and one frame-buffer window. You will end by having a shell prompt on the tty1.

The tty0 and tty3 are reserved for the kernel trace and information messages. For a user application, the tty1 represent the stdin and stdout while the tty2 represent the stderr. 

''Sim1'' rule means the simulator of TSAR is configured to one cluster, that is, 4 cores. Using ''sim4'', ''sim16'', ''sim64'' or ''sim128'' lets you start the simulator with (respectively) 4, 16, 64 or 128 clusters of 4 cores each.

''' Note ''': although the hardware configuration can be changed at each simulation, there is no need to recompile or regenerate the kernel. The kernel of ALMOS detects the hardware resources at each boot. A user application can get the number of online cores using the standard ''sysconf'' call (man sysconf).   


== Your first application ==

== Running without interactive mode ==