Described herein are a processor and a method of operating the processor to simulate a many-core target machine. The processor includes a plurality of processing cores arranged in a predetermined manner and a global target clock counter (GTCC) configured to count a number of simulated clock cycles in the target machine. A global stall controller (GSC) configured to halt execution of all the processing cores based on a determination of at least one processing core being in a fault condition; and wherein the processor acquires a base clock per instruction (CPI) of a target machine, the CPI corresponding to an average number of clock cycles required by the target machine to execute a single instruction, translates an application of the target machine to a compact executable trace to be executed by the processor, and adjusts a speed of simulation by adjusting an update rate of the global target clock counter.