This patch tidies up random number generation to ensure that it is
done consistently throughout the code base. In essence this involves a
clean-up of Ruby, and some code simplifications in the traffic
generator.
As part of this patch a bunch of skewed distributions (off-by-one etc)
have been fixed.
Note that a single global random number generator is used, and that
the object instantiation order will impact the behaviour (the sequence
of numbers will be unaffected, but if module A calles random before
module B then they would obviously see a different outcome). The
dependency on the instantiation order is true in any case due to the
execution-model of gem5, so we leave it as is. Also note that the
global ranom generator is not thread safe at this point.
Regressions using the memtest, TrafficGen or any Ruby tester are
affected and will be updated accordingly.
The Index type defined as typedef int64 does not really provide any help
since in most places we use primitive types instead of Index. Also, the name
Index is very generic that it does not merit being used as a typename.
This patch is as of now the final patch in the series of patches that replace
Time with Cycles.This patch further replaces Time with Cycles in Sequencer,
Profiler, different protocols and related entities.
Though Time has not been completely removed, the places where it is in use
seem benign as of now.
This patch was initiated so as to remove reference to g_system_ptr,
the pointer to Ruby System that is used for getting the current time.
That simple change actual requires changing a lot many things in slicc and
garnet. All these changes are related to how time is handled.
In most of the places, g_system_ptr has been replaced by another clock
object. The changes have been done under the assumption that all the
components in the memory system are on the same clock frequency, but the
actual clocks might be distributed.
This patch adds a prefetcher for the ruby memory system. The prefetcher
is based on a prefetcher implemented by others (well, I don't know
who wrote the original). The prefetcher does stride-based prefetching,
both unit and non-unit. It obseves the misses in the cache and trains on
these. After the training period is over, the prefetcher starts issuing
prefetch requests to the controller.
