/[gxemul]/trunk/man/gxemul.1

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Diff of /trunk/man/gxemul.1

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-revision 12 by dpavlin,
Mon Oct  8 16:18:38 2007 UTC
+revision 18 by dpavlin,
Mon Oct  8 16:19:11 2007 UTC
 Line 1
- .\" $Id: gxemul.1,v 1.29 2005/08/10 15:51:09 debug Exp $
+ .\" $Id: gxemul.1,v 1.35 2005/10/27 14:01:11 debug Exp $
  .\"
  .\" Copyright (C) 2004-2005  Anders Gavare.  All rights reserved.
  .\"
 Line 29
  .\" This is a minimal man page for GXemul. Process this file with
  .\"     groff -man -Tascii gxemul.1    or    nroff -man gxemul.1
  .\"
- .Dd AUGUST 2005
+ .Dd OCTOBER 2005
  .Dt GXEMUL 1
  .Os
  .Sh NAME
 Line 41
  .Op file Ar ...
  .Nm
  .Op general options
- .Op Ar @configfile ...
+ .Ar @configfile
  .Nm
  .Op userland, other, and general options
  .Ar file Op Ar args ...
  .Sh DESCRIPTION
  .Nm
- is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. It can be used to
+ is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
- run binary code for MIPS-based machines, regardless of host
+ emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
- platform. Several emulation modes are available. For some modes,
+ hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating
- processors and surrounding hardware components are emulated well enough to
+ systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine.
- let unmodified operating systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running
+ .Pp
- on a real machine.
+ The processor architecture best emulated by GXemul is MIPS, but other
- .Pp
+ architectures are also partially emulated.
- (Non-MIPS emulation modes are also under development, but so far none of
+ .Pp
- those modes has reached the completeness required to run unmodified
+ MIPS processors are emulated either using a simple type of binary
- operating systems.)
+ translator (on Alpha and i386 hosts), or using traditional slow
- .Pp
+ interpretation (all other hosts, including amd64 machines running in
- There are three ways to invoke the emulator. When emulating a
+-bit mode).
- complete machine, settings can be entered directly on the command line, or
+ .Pp
- they can be read from a configuration file. When emulating a userland
+ Non-MIPS processors (e.g. ARM) are emulated using a newer dynamic
- environment (syscall-only emulation, not emulating complete machines),
+ translation system (called dyntrans in the rest of this man page);
- then the program name and its argument should be given on the command
+ dyntrans does not require any host-specific code, so it should work on any
- line.
+ platform. Performance is somewhere between binary translation and
+ traditional interpretation.
+ .Pp
+ There are three ways to invoke the emulator:
+ .Pp
+. When emulating a complete machine, configuration options can be entered
+ directly on the command line.
+ .Pp
+. Options can be read from a configuration file.
+ .Pp
+. When emulating a userland environment (syscall-only emulation, not
+ emulating complete machines), then the program name and its argument
+ should be given on the command line. (This mode doesn't really work yet.)
  .Pp
  The easiest way to use the emulator is to supply settings directly on the
  command line. The most important thing you need to supply is the
- file argument. This is the name of a binary file (an ELF, a.out, ECOFF,
+ file argument. This is the name of a binary file (an ELF, a.out, COFF/ECOFF,
  SREC, or a raw binary image) which you wish to run in the emulator. This file
  might be an operating system kernel, or perhaps a ROM image file.
  .Pp
-Line 120 
 Other options:
+Line 132 
 Other options:
  .It Fl A
  Disable load/store alignment checks in some cases. This might give a small
  increase in performance, but the emulator will not run correctly if the
- emulated code actually tries to do unaligned loads or stores.
+ emulated code actually tries to do unaligned loads or stores. (This option
+ is only meaningful when emulating MIPS CPUs, when the host architecture is
+ Alpha or i386, and binary translation is enabled.)
  .It Fl B
  Disable dynamic binary translation. By default, bintrans
  will be turned on if the host+target architecture combination is
- supported.
+ supported. Currently, the only supported target architecture for bintrans
+ is MIPS, and the supported host architectures are Alpha and i386.
  .It Fl C Ar x
  Try to emulate a specific CPU type,
  .Ar "x".
-Line 163 
 Tape.
+Line 178 
 Tape.
  Force a specific ID number.
  .El
  .Pp
- Unless otherwise specified, filenames ending with ".iso" are assumed to be
+ Unless otherwise specified, filenames ending with ".iso" or ".cdr" are
- CDROM images. Most others are assumed to be disks. Depending on which
+ assumed to be CDROM images. Most others are assumed to be disks. Depending
- machine is being emulated, the default for disks can be either SCSI or
+ on which machine is being emulated, the default for disks can be either
- IDE. Some disk images that are very small are assumed to be floppy disks.
+ SCSI or IDE. Some disk images that are very small are assumed to be floppy
- (If you are not happy with the way a disk image is detected, then you need
+ disks. (If you are not happy with the way a disk image is detected, then
- to use explicit prefixes to force a specific type.)
+ you need to use explicit prefixes to force a specific type.)
  .Pp
  For floppies, the gH;S; prefix is ignored. Instead, the number of
  heads and cylinders are assumed to be 2 and 80, respectively, and the
-Line 183 
 This disables automatic clock adjustment
+Line 198 
 This disables automatic clock adjustment
  .It Fl i
  Display each instruction as it is being executed.
  .It Fl J
- Disable some speed tricks.
+ Disable some speed tricks. For MIPS emulation, these are mostly
+ timing-related. For non-MIPS emulation (i.e. those modes using dyntrans),
+ this flag disables the use of "instruction combinations".
  .It Fl j Ar n
  Set the name of the kernel to
  .Ar "n".
-Line 208 
 Set nr of CPUs (for SMP experiments).
+Line 225 
 Set nr of CPUs (for SMP experiments).
  Force a "netboot" (tftp instead of disk), even when a disk image is
  present (for DECstation, SGI, and ARC emulation).
  .It Fl o Ar arg
- Set the boot argument (for DEC, ARC, or SGI emulation).
+ Set the boot argument (mostly useful for DEC, ARC, or SGI emulation).
  Default
  .Ar arg
- for DEC is "-a", for ARC "-aN".
+ for DEC is "-a", for ARC/SGI it is "-aN", and for CATS it is "-A".
  .It Fl p Ar pc
  Add a breakpoint. (Remember to use the "0x" prefix for hex.)
  .It Fl Q
-Line 289 
 Force the single-step debugger to be ent
+Line 306 
 Force the single-step debugger to be ent
  .It Fl q
  Quiet mode; this suppresses startup messages.
  .It Fl s
- Show opcode usage statistics after the simulation.
+ For MIPS emulation: Show opcode usage statistics after the simulation.
+ For non-MIPS emulation (i.e. using dyntrans): Save statistics to a file at
+ regular intervals of which physical addresses that were executed.
  .It Fl V
  Start up in the single-step debugger, paused.
  .It Fl v
-Line 345 
 terrible than running without it.
+Line 364 
 terrible than running without it.
  .Pp
  Userland (syscall-only) emulation doesn't really work yet.
  .Pp
+ Emulation of MIPS CPUs is done differently from other emulation modes; the
+ documentation sometimes only reflect the way things work with MIPS
+ emulation, and it is incorrect when applied to e.g. ARM emulation.
+ .Pp
  .Nm
  does not simulate individual pipe-line stages or penalties caused by
  branch-prediction misses or cache misses, so it cannot be used for
- accurate performance measurement.
+ accurate simulation of any actual real-world processor.
  .Pp
  .Nm
  is not timing-accurate.

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