BadgerTrap

Abstract

The overheads of memory management units (MMUs) have gained importance in today's systems. Detailed simulators may be too slow to gain insights into micro-architectural techniques that improve MMU efficiency. To address this issue, we propose a novel tool, BadgerTrap, which allows online instrumentation of TLB misses. It allows first-order analysis of new hardware techniques to improve MMU efficiency. The tool helps to create and analyze x86-64 TLB miss trace. We describe example studies to show various ways this tool can be applied to gain new research insights.