It should be noted that not all of the hardware is strictly "emulated" (or simulated, if you prefer that term) in the traditional sense of interpreting each hardware instruction. The DPS in the name means "distributed processing system", and this is not merely a marketing term.
The DPS series, like many other mainframes, have multiple independent systems working together. For example, IO is handled by a FNP (frontend network processor) which was a (physically) separate minicomputer, with its own CPU, OS, etc. There were various FNP models (16-bit and 18-bit systems) produced. The DPS8M software implements the FNP at a high level, rather than running its original software (though there is both an FNP software simulator and a FPGA FNP project underway).
We did have some internal debate on if the system is a "simulator" or an "emulator", but really, it can be both, depending on how pedantic you want to be.
The biggest reason for the name being what it is, however, is that since the beginning, the software was called the "DPS8M Simulator", and even if emulator might be (arguably) a better name, it's not worth changing it at this point.
> We did have some internal debate on if the system is a "simulator" or an "emulator", but really, it can be both, depending on how pedantic you want to be.
> The biggest reason for the name being what it is, however, is that since the beginning, the software was called the "DPS8M Simulator", and even if emulator might be (arguably) a better name, it's not worth changing it at this point.
Honestly, "simulator" vs "emulator" is just a matter of what I'm used to now, as opposed to anything I find needlessly confusing: It seems like everyone else talks about this kind of software in terms of it being emulators and emulation, and reserves the word simulation for things like circuit simulators. Kind of an interesting linguistic quirk to observe, but it does make your use of the word simulator in this context a bit unusual.
It should be noted that not all of the hardware is strictly "emulated" (or simulated, if you prefer that term) in the traditional sense of interpreting each hardware instruction. The DPS in the name means "distributed processing system", and this is not merely a marketing term.
The DPS series, like many other mainframes, have multiple independent systems working together. For example, IO is handled by a FNP (frontend network processor) which was a (physically) separate minicomputer, with its own CPU, OS, etc. There were various FNP models (16-bit and 18-bit systems) produced. The DPS8M software implements the FNP at a high level, rather than running its original software (though there is both an FNP software simulator and a FPGA FNP project underway).
We did have some internal debate on if the system is a "simulator" or an "emulator", but really, it can be both, depending on how pedantic you want to be.
The biggest reason for the name being what it is, however, is that since the beginning, the software was called the "DPS8M Simulator", and even if emulator might be (arguably) a better name, it's not worth changing it at this point.
Disclosure: I'm one of the developers.
Edit: There are also some optimizations in place (https://dps8m.gitlab.io/dps8m-r3.0.1-archive/R3.0.1/global/S...) that blur the lines between emulator, simulator, and virtual machine.