2026-06-10 –, Poster Island B
The gem5 simulator is a widely used tool for microarchitectural research, but often incurs prohibitive execution times. gem5 mitigates this cost through checkpoint-based resumption, yet existing checkpoint-generation mechanisms remain slow, non-portable, or both---significantly limiting iterative hardware-software exploration.
We introduce QUICK (QEMU Internal Checkpointing for gem5), a framework that enables fast, automated, and deterministic generation of gem5-compatible checkpoints directly within QEMU.
QUICK integrates full-system checkpointing into QEMU’s TCG engine, capturing architectural, memory, and essential device state without external orchestration. QUICK substantially reduces checkpoint-generation overhead while preserving existing gem5 workflows, enabling scalable and systematic microarchitectural studies.
Initial validation demonstrates correct cross-simulator state transfer and consistent workload resumption.
QUICK implements checkpoint generation directly inside the QEMU TCG execution engine. At fixed instruction intervals, QUICK automatically creates full-system checkpoints in a format compatible with gem5.
These checkpoints capture the complete CPU state—including integer, floating-point, and vector registers, as well as miscellaneous registers such as the program counter—along with the entire main memory. Additionally, QUICK records peripheral states such as timers and UARTs, preventing potential kernel-level hangs during restoration.
These checkpoints can later be restored in gem5 to enable detailed cycle-accurate performance evaluation. By combining QEMU’s high-speed functional emulation with gem5’s detailed microarchitectural modeling, QUICK leverages the strengths of both platforms.
I am a PhD student in Chamers University of Technology and currently in Barcelona Supercomputing Center. My research is about optimizating performance of memory system for CPU and GPU workloads. I am familiar with CPU/GPU archiecture and also gem5 and accel-sim simulators.