Updated Intel® Software Development Emulator

[MarkC_Intel]

Hello, On October 2, 2014, we released version 7.8 of the Intel® Software Development Emulator. It is available here: http://www.intel.com/software/sde

See the release notes for a full list of changes.

This release includes:

• Support for AVX512 VBMI and AVX512 IFMA instructions
• Better support for running on Haswell hosts
• Updated CPUID information

For more information on the new instructions see http://www.intel.com/software/isa

[andysem]

The post is outdated, SDE 7.8.0 has been released.

I have a request. Could the --help message spell out the architecture names for command line parameters, such as -mrm, -pnr and others? I can guess that MRM expands to Merom, but some others are less clear.

[andysem]

Also, is it possible to obtain decyphered cpuid results corresponding to different CPUs with SDE? The main purpose of this feature is to answer questions like "does CPU X support feature Y?" It'd be great if I could run something like 'sde -hsw -cpuid' and get a decoded result of Haswell cpuid for different leaves with descriptions compatible with Intel docs.
 

[MarkC_Intel]

Hi, It is pretty easy to write a little application program that queries relevant CPUID leaves (mostly leaf 1 and leaf 7 these days) and print out the settings of the bits. Then you just run it under the control of SDE and see what features the emulated CPU reports as being present. I have a small portable program that we use for this internally. I'd have to clean it up a little before I could give it out though.

[MarkC_Intel]

 Could the --help message spell out the architecture names for command line parameters, such as -mrm, -pnr and others? I can guess that MRM expands to Merom, but some others are less clear.

Good suggestion. Here's the information for now:

     -p4                 Set chip-check and CPUID for Pentium4
     -p4p                Set chip-check and CPUID for Pentium4 Prescott
     -mrm                Set chip-check and CPUID for Merom
     -pnr                Set chip-check and CPUID for Penryn
     -nhm                Set chip-check and CPUID for Nehalem
     -wsm                Set chip-check and CPUID for Westmere
     -snb                Set chip-check and CPUID for Sandybridge
     -ivb                Set chip-check and CPUID for Ivybridge
     -hsw                Set chip-check and CPUID for Haswell
     -bdw                Set chip-check and CPUID for Broadwell
     -skx                Set chip-check and CPUID for Skylake Server
     -skl                Set chip-check and CPUID for Skylake
     -knl                Set chip-check and CPUID for Knights Landing

[MarkC_Intel]

andysem wrote:

The post is outdated, SDE 7.8.0 has been released.

I just updated the top-post for 7.8. Thx.

[andysem]

Mark Charney (Intel) wrote:

Hi, It is pretty easy to write a little application program that queries relevant CPUID leaves (mostly leaf 1 and leaf 7 these days) and print out the settings of the bits. Then you just run it under the control of SDE and see what features the emulated CPU reports as being present. I have a small portable program that we use for this internally. I'd have to clean it up a little before I could give it out though.

Thanks for your replies.

Yes, that is possible. The main problem is that it's rather tedious, given that there are a lot of CPU features indicated by cpuid, and I'd have to keep it updated as new features get announced. You have that information in SDE, and you update it timely, so all that is needed is to format it. IMHO, this would simplify people's life significantly.

[andysem]

Alternatively, there could be some other tool or web-service (similar to the Intrinsics Guide) that would provide information on the cpuid for different CPUs.

Currently, AFAIK there is no reliable way to know what features are supported by a given CPU (or the other way around - which CPUs support a given feature). ark.intel.com doesn't provide full information about that, and it is unclear whether the missing features are just not mentioned or not supported. This information is very much needed by developers.