Suggestions for tutorial content or a frequently asked questions (FAQ)

[bhpayne]

Based on questions raised at the SST user community meeting earlier this week, here are suggestions for content

• what is DES? (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete-event_simulation and https://github.com/jleidel/sst-documentation/blob/Level0Container/Tutorials/Level0Tutorial.md)
• how does SST relate to DES?
• jargon unique to SST: elements, core, component, link, subcomponent, time vortex
• SST vs other computer architecture simulation software like Verilator, ns3, OMNet++, gem5
• how does SST compare to alternative DES options? (e.g., PySim)
• Is SST cycle accurate? (That's a wrong question.)
• How to specify arch using Python driver file
• How to specify complicated arch using Python ahp_graph
• Why is running my MPI application on a simulated HPC architecture non-trivial? (Answer: SST is “just” a DES. That means it doesn’t run an operating system or have a compiler. An application needs to be compiled, and the compiled application relies on system calls provided by the operating system. Also, applications may rely on having access to a filesystem. There’s no model of I/O included in SST. As a consequence, “running an application” is often replaced with relying on patterns of message passing rather than the actual messages associated with an application. See QEMU and gem5 instead
• How to avoid using Python for sst: JSON input
• How to specify absurdly large simulations: parallel JSON input
• What type and size of computer do I need for SST? (Answer: Desktop to HPC)
• quickstart for SST -- run a (serial) demo
• quickstart for SST -- run a SST demo that uses MPI
• how to install SST baremetal
• How to run SST from a container? (Answer: see https://github.com/tactcomplabs/sst-containers and https://github.com/jleidel/sst-documentation/tree/Level3Container and https://github.com/jleidel/sst-documentation/blob/Level0Container/Tutorials/Containers.md)
• how to create a new SST component from scratch
• how to leverage an existing SST element
• how to combine existing SST elements
• an overview of SST-core
• an overview of statistics in SST
• Can sst run faster by using GPUs or FPGAs? (That's a wrong question.)
• How does SST use ml or ai or llm? (That's a wrong question.)

[jwilso]

@gvoskuilen Seems to me that this is something that should be broken up. Not sure all of these can be implemented, but there are some interesting suggestions as well.