The simulation of systems connected over an Ethernet network can be distributed over several Simics instances in a distributed simulation, as described in Chapter 11. A link object can be configured to have global distribution, which means that several link object in separate Simics instances can form a shared link, over which all connected systems can communicate even if they are simulated by different Simics instances.
A link object with global distribution is automatically joined with any other link object in another Simics instance if it also has global distribution and has the same name.
The way to make a link object have global distribution is to set its central attribute to point to the central-client object. The <ethernet-link>.info shows the current setting. (Note that you must set up a central server and client as described in Chapter 11 for these examples to work.)
simics> @conf.ethlink0.central = conf.central_client
simics> ethlink0.info
Information about ethlink0 [class ethernet-link]
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Latency : 1 us
Distribution : global
Filtering : enabled