Commit 132d7a93 authored by Jonas Kaufmann's avatar Jonas Kaufmann Committed by Antoine Kaufmann
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README: tweak intro and include concrete use-cases

This is based on our recent HackerNews Post and the description on our website.
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## What is SimBricks?
SimBricks is a simulator framework aiming to enable true end-to-end simulation
of modern data center network systems, including multiple servers running a full
software stack with unmodified OS and applications, network topologies and
devices, as well as other off the shelf and custom hardware components. Instead
of designing a new simulator from scratch, SimBricks combines and connects
multiple existing simulators for different components into a simulated full
system. Our primary use-case for SimBricks is computer systems, networks, and
architecture research. Our [paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14219) provides a
more detailed discussion of technical details and use-cases.
Currently, SimBricks includes the following simulators:
SimBricks is an open-source simulation framework for intricate HW-SW systems
that enables rapid virtual prototyping and meaningful end-to-end evaluation in
simulation. SimBricks modularly combines and connects battle-tested simulators
for different components: machines (e.g. QEMU, gem5, Simics), hardware
components (e.g. Verilator, Tofino, FEMU SSD), and networks (e.g. ns-3,
OMNeT++). SimBricks simulations run unmodified full-system stacks, including
applications, operating systems such as Linux, and hardware RTL.
#### Concrete use-cases:
- Evaluating HW accelerators, from early design with simple behavioral models,
to simulating complete Verilog implementations, both as part of complete
systems with many instances of the accelerator and machines running full-blown
operating systems and real applications
- Testing network protocols, topologies, and communication stacks for real
workloads in a potentially large system (we ran up to 1000 hosts so far)
- Rapid RTL prototyping for FPGAs, no waiting for synthesis or fiddling with
timing initially
- Our [paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14219) provides a more detailed
discussion of technical details and use-cases
#### Currently, SimBricks includes the following simulators:
- [QEMU](https://www.qemu.org) (fast host simulator)
- [gem5](https://www.gem5.org/) (flexible and detailed host simulator)
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