A core simulator includes one or more simulated processors, a trace-based traffic generator, and a simulated memory subsystem. Each simulated processor includes a core element and at least one lower-level cache excluded from the core element. The trace-based traffic generator includes a plurality of modeled caches that model the at least lower-level cache without modeling the core element. The trace-based traffic generator is configured to receive at least one workload trace and based on the workload trace simulate actual memory traffic to be processed by the simulated memory subsystem. The simulated memory subsystem is shared between the at least one simulated processor and the trace-based traffic generator. The trace-based traffic generator performs a data exchange with the memory subsystem based on the at least one workload trace. The data exchange impacts a measured performance of the at least one simulated processor.