QFlex | Quick & Flexible Computer Architecture Simulation

State-of-the-art modeling tools for the computer architecture community.
The QFlex project targets quick, accurate, and flexible simulation of multi-node computer systems.

Download QFlex

QFlex’s source code is hosted on GitHub: parsa-epfl/qflex
QFlex is available both as a command-line tool (CLI) and as a Docker image, making setup and integration straightforward.
For more details on installation, usage, and configuration, visit the CLI documentation.

About QFlex

Computer system designers traditionally rely on fast emulation and full-system simulation to instrument designs, develop system software, model hardware components, and measure metrics of interest. In recent years, post-Moore platforms have introduced more heterogeneity (e.g. accelerators), demanding integrated hardware/software co-design.

Effective integration requires open tools to allow fast instrumentation of applications, full-system models for network and storage controllers, and support for multi-node systems. Full-system server instrumentation needs several orders of magnitude in speed to be practical.

QFlex is a family of full-system instrumentation tools built on top of QEMU, currently supporting ARM and RISC-V ISAs. It includes:

A trace-based model for quickly instrumenting existing QEMU images
Timing models to simulate multicore CPU microarchitecture
Support for multi-node simulation and system stacks

For more details, modules, and citations, see the project documentation and the GitHub repo.

News / Releases

QFlex v2.0 Released

Released March 20, 2020. QFlex continues to support trace-based simulation and timing models. (See release notes on GitHub.)

QFlex v1.0 Released

Released April 1, 2017. QFlex enabled full-system microarchitectural simulation of multicores running unmodified applications. A CloudSuite workload image was provided. (zenodo.org)

We encourage users to watch the GitHub repository and file issues for enhancements or bug fixes.

Flexus (cycle-accurate simulator used in QFlex): parsa-epfl/flexus
libqflex (API between QEMU and Flexus): parsa-epfl/libqflex
EPFL’s EcoCloud page on QFlex: EcoCloud – QFlex

Citation / Licensing & Acknowledgments

QFlex is open source under licenses as described in the GitHub repository.
The project relies on QEMU, Boost, Conan, and other components, each governed by their own licenses.