This changeset moves the access trace functionality from the
CommMonitor into a separate probe. The probe can be hooked up to any
component that exports probe points of the type ProbePoints::Packet.
This patch moves the dependency on Google's Protocol Buffers library
from the CommMonitor to the MemTraceProbe, which means that the
CommMonitor (including stack distance profiling) no long depends on
it.
This changeset removes the stack distance calculator hooks from the
CommMonitor class and implements a stack distance calculator as a
memory system probe instead. The probe can be hooked up to any
component that exports probe points of the type ProbePoints::Packet.
Splits the CommMonitor trace_file parameter into three parameters. Previously,
the trace was only enabled if the trace_file parameter was set, and would be
written to this file. This patch adds in a trace_enable and trace_compress
parameter to the CommMonitor.
No trace is generated if trace_enable is set to False. If it is set to True, the
trace is written to a file based on the name of the SimObject in the simulation
hierarchy. For example, system.cluster.il1_commmonitor.trc. This filename can be
overridden by additionally specifying a file name to the trace_file parameter
(more on this later).
The trace_compress parameter will append .gz to any filename if set to True.
This enables compression of the generated traces. If the file name already ends
in .gz, then no changes are made.
The trace_file parameter will override the name set by the trace_enable
parameter. In the case that the specified name does not end in .gz but
trace_compress is set to true, .gz is appended to the supplied file name.
This patch adds packet tracing to the communication monitor using a
protobuf as the mechanism for creating the trace.
If no file is specified, then the tracing is disabled. If a file is
specified, then for every packet that is successfully sent, a protobuf
message is serialized to the file.
When casting objects in the generated SWIG interfaces, SWIG uses
classical C-style casts ( (Foo *)bar; ). In some cases, this can
degenerate into the equivalent of a reinterpret_cast (mainly if only a
forward declaration of the type is available). This usually works for
most compilers, but it is known to break if multiple inheritance is
used anywhere in the object hierarchy.
This patch introduces the cxx_header attribute to Python SimObject
definitions, which should be used to specify a header to include in
the SWIG interface. The header should include the declaration of the
wrapped object. We currently don't enforce header the use of the
header attribute, but a warning will be generated for objects that do
not use it.
This patch adds a communication monitor MemObject that can be inserted
between a master and slave port to provide a range of statistics about
the communication passing through it. The communication monitor is
non-invasive and does not change any properties or timing of the
packets, with the exception of adding a sender state to be able to
track latency. The statistics are only collected in timing mode (not
atomic) to avoid slowing down any fast forwarding.
An example of the statistics captured by the monitor are: read/write
burst lengths, bandwidth, request-response latency, outstanding
transactions, inter transaction time, transaction count, and address
distribution. The monitor can be used in combination with periodic
resetting and dumping of stats (through schedStatEvent) to study the
behaviour over time.
In future patches, a selection of convenience scripts will be added to
aid in visualising the statistics collected by the monitor.
