Kite: Architecture Simulator for RISC-V Instruction Set

Kite is an architecture simulator that models a five-stage pipeline based on the RISC-V instruction set. The initial version of Kite was developed in 2019 for educational purposes as part of EEE3530 Computer Architecture. Kite implements the five-stage pipeline model described in Computer Organization and Design, RISC-V Edition: The Hardware and Software Interface by D. Patterson and J. Hennessey (Link to Amazon). The objective of Kite is to provide students with an easy-to-use simulation framework and an accurate timing model, as described in the book. It supports most of the basic instructions introduced in the book, such as add, slli, ld, sd, and beq instructions. Users can easily compose RISC-V assembly programs and execute them through the pipeline model for entry-level architecture studies. The pipeline model in Kite offers several basic functionalities, including instruction dependency checks (i.e., data hazards), pipeline stalls, data forwarding (optional), branch predictions (optional), data cache structures, etc.

The five-stage pipeline model in Kite is implemented in C++. Its purpose is to help users experience entry-level architecture simulations with a simple, easy-to-use framework. As students enter the field of computer architecture (whether in product development or research), they will likely use architecture simulators in their work. Most architecture simulators are written in C/C++, as these programming languages are well-suited for interfacing between computer hardware and software.

Prerequisite, Download, and Build:
The simple implementation of Kite is easy to install. It requires only a g++ compiler to build and does not depend on other libraries or external tools. It was validated in Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial), 18.04 (Bionic Beaver), 20.04 (Focal Fossa), 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) and Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave), 10.15 (Catalina), 11 (Big Sur), 12 (Monterey), 13 (Ventura), 14 (Sonoma). The latest release of Kite is v1.12 (as of March 2024). To obtain a copy of Kite v1.12, use the following command in the terminal.

$ git clone ––branch v1.12 https://github.com/yonseicasl/kite

The following executes an example RISC-V assembly code, program_code.

$ cd kite/
$ make -j
$ ./kite program_code

Documentation:
For more detailed information, refer to the documentation in doc/kite.pdf. Please use the following to reference this work.

@misc{song_kite2019,
    author       = {W. Song},
    title        = {{Kite: An Architecture Simulator for RISC-V Instruction Set}},
    howpublished = {Yonsei University},
    month        = {May},
    year         = {2019},
    note         = {[Online], Available: \url{https://casl.yonsei.ac.kr/kite}},
}