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A CHARON-AXP emulated CPU is configured with the "enabled" command enabling the high performance Advanced CPU Emulation mode ("ACE"). The ACE option optimizes the HP Alpha instruction interpretation and significantly improves performance. It also requires approximately twice the amount of host memory allocated by CHARON instance itself to store the optimized code (Note that 2Gb of host memory + the amount of HP Alpha memory emulated per each CHARON instance is required).

ACE optimization is performed dynamically during execution. It does not need to write optimized code back to disk, ACE provides its full capability instantly. The optimization does not compromise the HP Alpha instruction decoding; CHARON-AXP remains fully HP Alpha hardware compatible and completely transparent to the HP Alpha operating systems and applications.

This configuration setting enables the ACE mode if the CHARON-AXP license permits it. If this configuration setting is omitted from the CHARON-AXP configuration file and the license permits it, "true" is the default, otherwise "false" is the default.

Example:

Specifies the architecture of the virtual Alpha CPU. Can be one of the following: EV4, EV45, EV5, EV56, EV6, EV67, EV68

Example:

Refer to this section to find an appropriate value of the HP Alpha architecture per each HP Alpha model supported by CHARON-AXP.

cache_size

"cache_size" defines the amount of memory in megabytes allocated to the ACE cache.

Default value is 1GB (1024 MB).

Example:

Specifies a name for the file in which CHARON-AXP preserves the time and date during its “offline” period. This file also keeps some console parameters (such as the default boot device).

By default it is left unspecified.

Example:

It is recommended to specify the full path to the TOY file.

Specifies whether and how the guest OS time is synchronized with the CHARON host time.

Syntax:

where:

Example:

To synchronize the guest OS with TOY, use the following commands (from "SYSTEM"/"root" account):

The default value is "not specified" - it means that by default CHARON does not synchronize its guest OS time with the CHARON host time but collects date and time from the file specified with "container" parameter.

If "sync_to_host" parameter is specified there is no need to specify "container" parameter in addition.

Specifies the name of a file in which CHARON-AXP stores an intermediate state of its Flash ROM. This state includes, for example, most of the console parameters.

By default it is left unspecified.

it is recommended to specify the full path to this file

Example:

Allows changing the system name, for example:

Refer to this section to find an appropriate value of the HP Alpha system name per each HP Alpha model supported by CHARON-AXP

Allows changing the system serial number, for example:

Any sequence of characters can be used as a serial number. Sequences longer than 16 symbols are truncated to 16 symbols.

Serial Numbers should be according to DEC standard: 10 characters. First two characters are capital letters, remaining 8 characters are decimal digits.

By default it is set to SN01234567

DSRDB - Dynamic System Recognition Data Block. These parameters allow changing the emulated hardware model type.

dsrdb[0] stands for SMM - System Marketing Model.

Example:

This section describes connection between "dsrdb" parameter and the rest of the parameters defining an exact HP Alpha model - including SMM.

Sets Console and PAL code versions in the following way:

Example:

Specifies period of interval timer, in microseconds. Only two values are supported:

• 10000 (which corresponds to 100Hz interval timer)
• 1000 (which corresponds to 1000Hz interval timer)

By default it is set to 10000.

Determines whether CHARON-AXP boots automatically if the correct boot flags are set (and saved in the HP Alpha console files).