Cylon: Fast and Accurate Full-System Emulation of CXL-SSDs
summary
Cylon is a full-system CXL-SSD emulator that reproduces sub-μs cache hits (≈800 ns, fast path at 0.16 μs, claimed 92× speedup vs KimU) and tens-of-μs misses (≈40 μs) by combining a hybrid execution path with dynamic EPT remapping and shared EPT memory. It validates against a Samsung CMH prototype, runs unmodified OSes and apps near bare-metal, models configurable caching and prefetch policies (prefetch degree raises hit rate from 18% to 86%), and cuts miss-transition overhead from ~23 μs to ~16 μs.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Cylon CXL-SSD emulator intro
- 1:01CXL-SSD architecture gap
- 2:30Fast accurate CXL-SSD emulator need
- 3:37Silent emulator design
- 5:23Hybrid cache hit/miss paths
- 6:28Dynamic EPT remapping
- 7:53Shared EPT memory
- 9:18Latency validation
- 10:45Bandwidth validation CMH
- 11:47Pluggable caching policies
- 12:51Eviction policies CDF
- 13:33Prefetching impact
- 14:15YCSB real app validation
- 15:17Performance techniques
- 16:42Summary open-source
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