This patch makes the internal links within the network topology
unidirectional, thus allowing any deadlock-free routing algorithms to
be specified from the topology itself using weights.
This patch also renames Mesh.py and MeshDirCorners.py to
Mesh_XY.py and MeshDirCorners_XY.py (Mesh with XY routing).
It also adds a Mesh_westfirst.py and CrossbarGarnet.py topologies.
This patch changes MessageBuffer and TimerTable, two structures used for
buffering messages by components in ruby. These structures would no longer
maintain pointers to clock objects. Functions in these structures have been
changed to take as input current time in Tick. Similarly, these structures
will not operate on Cycle valued latencies for different operations. The
corresponding functions would need to be provided with these latencies by
components invoking the relevant functions. These latencies should also be
in Ticks.
I felt the need for these changes while trying to speed up ruby. The ultimate
aim is to eliminate Consumer class and replace it with an EventManager object in
the MessageBuffer and TimerTable classes. This object would be used for
scheduling events. The event itself would contain information on the object and
function to be invoked.
In hindsight, it seems I should have done this while I was moving away from use
of a single global clock in the memory system. That change led to introduction
of clock objects that replaced the global clock object. It never crossed my
mind that having clock object pointers is not a good design. And now I really
don't like the fact that we have separate consumer, receiver and sender
pointers in message buffers.
Expose MessageBuffers from SLICC controllers as SimObjects that can be
manipulated in Python. This patch has numerous benefits:
1) First and foremost, it exposes MessageBuffers as SimObjects that can be
manipulated in Python code. This allows parameters to be set and checked in
Python code to avoid obfuscating parameters within protocol files. Further, now
as SimObjects, MessageBuffer parameters are printed to config output files as a
way to track parameters across simulations (e.g. buffer sizes)
2) Cleans up special-case code for responseFromMemory buffers, and aligns their
instantiation and use with mandatoryQueue buffers. These two special buffers
are the only MessageBuffers that are exposed to components outside of SLICC
controllers, and they're both slave ends of these buffers. They should be
exposed outside of SLICC in the same way, and this patch does it.
3) Distinguishes buffer-specific parameters from buffer-to-network parameters.
Specifically, buffer size, randomization, ordering, recycle latency, and ports
are all specific to a MessageBuffer, while the virtual network ID and type are
intrinsics of how the buffer is connected to network ports. The former are
specified in the Python object, while the latter are specified in the
controller *.sm files. Unlike buffer-specific parameters, which may need to
change depending on the simulated system structure, buffer-to-network
parameters can be specified statically for most or all different simulated
systems.
This patch addresses a warning related to the swig interface
generation for the Switch class. The cxx_header is now specified
correctly, and the header in question has got a few includes added to
make it all compile.
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.
The simple network's endpoint bandwidth value is used to adjust the overall
bandwidth of the network. Specifically, the ration between endpoint bandwidth
and the MESSAGE_SIZE_MULTIPLIER determines the increase. By setting the value
to 1000, that means the bandwdith factor specified in the links translates to
the link bandwidth in bytes. Previously, it was increasing that value by 10.
This patch will likely require a reset of the ruby regression tester stats.
Moved the buffer_size, endpoint_bandwidth, and adaptive_routing params out of
the top-level parent network object and to only those networks that actually
use those parameters.
The necessary companion conversion of Ruby objects generated by SLICC
are converted to M5 SimObjects in the following patch, so this patch
alone does not compile.
Conversion of Garnet network models is also handled in a separate
patch; that code is temporarily disabled from compiling to allow
testing of interim code.
