Eli5: What is the difference between Emulation and Simulation?
In: 22
Tl;dr – Emulation and simulation are two ways of trying to understand how something works. Emulation is like making a copy of something, while simulation is like making a model of something. Both can be useful, but they are used in different ways. Emulation is good for testing things, while simulation is good for studying how things might work in different situations.
The easiest way to differentiate between emulation and simulation is the level of detail and accuracy. With emulation, the goal is to replicate the behavior of a system as accurately as possible, down to the minutiae. Things like the timing of processes, emulating hardware clocks, handling of I/O, and all other aspects of the system’s behavior. It’s often used when necessary to test a system or component, such as during development of hardware interfaces.
For simulation, the focus is on understanding the behavior of a system when different conditions exist or analyzing how it could behave in the future. The level of detail and accuracy may or may not be as important as it is with emulation. Typically the simulator focuses on key aspects of the system that are being studied, and utilizes approximations to make the simulation more tractable. A good example is weather forecasting. Simulating what may occur with different atmospheric conditions.
Another important difference between emulation and simulation is the use of real and artificial data. The goal is to replicate the behavior of a real system when it comes to emulation, so you gotta use real data as input. In simulation, on the other hand, the focus is on studying the behavior of a hypothetical or modeled system, so the simulator can use artificial or simulated data as input.
Latest Answers