Modular End-to-End System Simulation

SimBricks

Enable end-to-end system evaluation when hardware testbeds are out of reach through modular combination of existing simulators for different components.

SimBricks is a simulation framework that enables full end-to-end evaluation of modern network systems in simulation. Our primary aim is to to enable network systems research and instruction — from rapid prototyping to meaningful performance evaluation. SimBricks modularly combines and connects multiple battle-tested simulators for different components: machines (e.g. QEMU, gem5), hardware components (e.g. Verilator, Tofino, FEMU SSD), and networks (e.g. ns-3, OMNeT++). SimBricks assembles multiple instances of these simulators into simulated testbeds capable of running unmodified full system stacks, including applications and operating systems such as Linux.

Publications

SplitSim: Large-Scale Simulations for Evaluating Network Systems Research

Hejing Li, Praneeth Balasubramanian, Marvin Meiers, Jialin Li, Antoine Kaufmann
In 21st International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT), 2025.
[Preprint]

Columbo: Low Level End-to-End System Traces through Modular Full-System Simulation

Jakob Görgen, Vaastav Anand, Hejing Li, Jialin Li, Antoine Kaufmann
In arXiv, 2024.
[Preprint]

Modular Full-System Simulation for Cyber-Physical Systems

Gideon Mohr
MSc thesis, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2025.
[Paper PDF]

AC/DSim: Full System Energy Estimation with Modular Simulation

Jonas Kaufmann
MSc thesis, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2024.
[Paper PDF]

End-to-End Network Protocol Evaluation with Modular Simulation

Marvin Meiers
MSc thesis, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2024.
[Paper PDF]

Low-Level End-to-End System-Traces through Modular Full System Simulation

Jakob Görgen
MSc thesis, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2024.
[Paper PDF]

AC/DSim: Full System Energy Estimation with Modular Simulation

Jonas Kaufmann
In ACM Student Research Competition @ SOSP 2023, 2023.
Third Place in Graduate Category
[Poster]

SplitSim: Scalable and Parallel Full Data Center System Simulations

Hejing Li, Antoine Kaufmann
In The Fifth Young Architect Workshop (YArch), Vancouver BC, Canada, 2023.
[Poster] [Video]

Improving Disaggregated System Evaluation with Modular End-to-End Simulation

Bin Gao, Hejing Li, Jialin Li, Antoine Kaufmann
In 3rd Workshop On Resource Disaggregation and Serverless Computing (WORDS), Virtual, 2022.
[Paper PDF] [Video] [Slides]

SimBricks: End-to-End Network System Evaluation with Modular Simulation

Hejing Li, Jialin Li, Antoine Kaufmann
In ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference (SIGCOMM), Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2022.
[Paper PDF] [Video] [Slides] [Artifact]