For X86, the o3 CPU would get stuck with the commit stage not being
drained if an interrupt arrived while drain was pending. isDrained()
makes sure that pcState.microPC() == 0, thus ensuring that we are at
an instruction boundary. However, when we take an interrupt we
execute:
pcState.upc(romMicroPC(entry));
pcState.nupc(romMicroPC(entry) + 1);
tc->pcState(pcState);
As a result, the MicroPC is no longer zero. This patch ensures the drain is
delayed until no interrupts are present. Once draining, non-synchronous
interrupts are deffered until after the switch.
Analogous to ee049bf (for x86). Requires a bump of the checkpoint version
and corresponding upgrader code to move the condition code register values
to the new register file.
A small bug in the bimodal predictor caused significant degradation in
performance on some benchmarks. This was caused by using the wrong
globalHistoryReg during the update phase. This patches fixes the bug
and brings the performance to normal level.
This patch fixes the load blocked/replay mechanism in the o3 cpu. Rather than
flushing the entire pipeline, this patch replays loads once the cache becomes
unblocked.
Additionally, deferred memory instructions (loads which had conflicting stores),
when replayed would not respect the number of functional units (only respected
issue width). This patch also corrects that.
Improvements over 20% have been observed on a microbenchmark designed to
exercise this behavior.
O3 is supposed to stop fetching instructions once a quiesce is encountered.
However due to a bug, it would continue fetching instructions from the current
fetch buffer. This is because of a break statment that only broke out of the
first of 2 nested loops. It should have broken out of both.
The o3 cpu could attempt to schedule inactive threads under round-robin SMT
mode.
This is because it maintained an independent priority list of threads from the
active thread list. This priority list could be come stale once threads were
inactive, leading to the cpu trying to fetch/commit from inactive threads.
Additionally the fetch queue is now forcibly flushed of instrctuctions
from the de-scheduled thread.
Relevant output:
24557000: system.cpu: [tid:1]: Calling deactivate thread.
24557000: system.cpu: [tid:1]: Removing from active threads list
24557500: system.cpu:
FullO3CPU: Ticking main, FullO3CPU.
24557500: system.cpu.fetch: Running stage.
24557500: system.cpu.fetch: Attempting to fetch from [tid:1]
When a branch mispredicted gem5 would squash all history after and including
the mispredicted branch. However, the mispredicted branch is still speculative
and its history is required to rollback state if another, older, branch
mispredicts. This leads to things like RAS corruption.
This patch adds a fetch queue that sits between fetch and decode to the
o3 cpu. This effectively decouples fetch from decode stalls allowing it
to be more aggressive, running futher ahead in the instruction stream.
The o3 pipeline interlock/stall logic is incorrect. o3 unnecessicarily stalled
fetch and decode due to later stages in the pipeline. In general, a stage
should usually only consider if it is stalled by the adjacent, downstream stage.
Forcing stalls due to later stages creates and results in bubbles in the
pipeline. Additionally, o3 stalled the entire frontend (fetch, decode, rename)
on a branch mispredict while the ROB is being serially walked to update the
RAT (robSquashing). Only should have stalled at rename.
As highlighed on the mailing list gem5's writeback modeling can impact
performance. This patch removes the limitation on maximum outstanding issued
instructions, however the number that can writeback in a single cycle is still
respected in instToCommit().
We currently generate and compile one version of the ISA code per CPU
model. This is obviously wasting a lot of resources at compile
time. This changeset factors out the interface into a separate
ExecContext class, which also serves as documentation for the
interface between CPUs and the ISA code. While doing so, this
changeset also fixes up interface inconsistencies between the
different CPU models.
The main argument for using one set of ISA code per CPU model has
always been performance as this avoid indirect branches in the
generated code. However, this argument does not hold water. Booting
Linux on a simulated ARM system running in atomic mode
(opt/10.linux-boot/realview-simple-atomic) is actually 2% faster
(compiled using clang 3.4) after applying this patch. Additionally,
compilation time is decreased by 35%.
The namespace Message conflicts with the Message data type used extensively
in Ruby. Since Ruby is being moved to the same Master/Slave ports based
configuration style as the rest of gem5, this conflict needs to be resolved.
Hence, the namespace is being renamed to ProtoMessage.
The branch predictor is normally only built when a CPU that uses a
branch predictor is built. The list of CPUs is currently incomplete as
the simple CPUs support branch predictors (for warming, branch stats,
etc). In practice, all CPU models now use branch predictors, so this
changeset removes the CPU model check and replaces it with a check for
the NULL ISA.
RefCountingPtr is sometimes forward declared to avoid having to
include refcnt.hh. This does not work since we typically return
instances of RefCountingPtr rather than references to instances. The
only reason this currently works is that we include refcnt.hh in
cprintf.hh, which "leaks" the header to most other source files. This
changeset replaces such forward declarations with an include of
refcnt.hh.
This patch does some minor house keeping of the branch predictor by
adopting STL containers, and shifting some iterator to use range-based
for loops.
The predictor history is also changed from a list to a deque as we
never to insertion/deletion other than at the front and back.
This patch adds a check to ensure that packets which are not going to
a memory range are suppressed in the traffic generator. Thus, if a
trace is collected in full-system, the packets destined for devices
are not played back.
This patch contains a new CPU model named `Minor'. Minor models a four
stage in-order execution pipeline (fetch lines, decompose into
macroops, decompose macroops into microops, execute).
The model was developed to support the ARM ISA but should be fixable
to support all the remaining gem5 ISAs. It currently also works for
Alpha, and regressions are included for ARM and Alpha (including Linux
boot).
Documentation for the model can be found in src/doc/inside-minor.doxygen and
its internal operations can be visualised using the Minorview tool
utils/minorview.py.
Minor was designed to be fairly simple and not to engage in a lot of
instruction annotation. As such, it currently has very few gathered
stats and may lack other gem5 features.
Minor is faster than the o3 model. Sample results:
Benchmark | Stat host_seconds (s)
---------------+--------v--------v--------
(on ARM, opt) | simple | o3 | minor
| timing | timing | timing
---------------+--------+--------+--------
10.linux-boot | 169 | 1883 | 1075
10.mcf | 117 | 967 | 491
20.parser | 668 | 6315 | 3146
30.eon | 542 | 3413 | 2414
40.perlbmk | 2339 | 20905 | 11532
50.vortex | 122 | 1094 | 588
60.bzip2 | 2045 | 18061 | 9662
70.twolf | 207 | 2736 | 1036
Check for free entries in Load Queue and Store Queue separately to
avoid cases when load cannot be renamed due to full Store Queue and
vice versa.
This work was done while Binh was an intern at AMD Research.
Using '== true' in a boolean expression is totally redundant,
and using '== false' is pretty verbose (and arguably less
readable in most cases) compared to '!'.
It's somewhat of a pet peeve, perhaps, but I had some time
waiting for some tests to run and decided to clean these up.
Unfortunately, SLICC appears not to have the '!' operator,
so I had to leave the '== false' tests in the SLICC code.
This patch removes the stat totalCommittedInsts. This variable was used for
recording the total number of instructions committed across all the threads
of a core. The instructions committed by each thread are recorded invidually.
The total would now be generated by summing these individual counts.
This patch adds a the member function StaticInst::printFlags to allow all
of an instruction's flags to be printed without using the individual
is... member functions or resorting to exposing the 'flags' vector
It also replaces the enum definition StaticInst::Flags with a
Python-generated enumeration and adds to the enum generation mechanism
in src/python/m5/params.py to allow Enums to be placed in namespaces
other than Enums or, alternatively, in wrapper structs allowing them to
be inherited by other classes (so populating that class's name-space
with the enumeration element names).
The ARM TLBs have a bootUncacheability flag used to make some loads
and stores become uncacheable when booting in FS mode. Later the
flag is cleared to let those loads and stores operate as normal. When
doing a takeOverFrom(), this flag's state is not preserved and is
momentarily reset until the CPSR is touched. On single core runs this
is a non-issue. On multi-core runs this can lead to crashes on the O3
CPU model from the following series of events:
1) takeOverFrom executed to switch from Atomic -> O3
2) All bootUncacheability flags are reset to true
3) Core2 tries to execute a load covered by bootUncacheability, it
is flagged as uncacheable
4) Core2's load needs to replay due to a pipeline flush
3) Core1 core does an action on CPSR
4) The handling code for CPSR then checks all other cores
to determine if bootUncacheability can be set to false
5) Asynchronously set bootUncacheability on all cores to false
6) Core2 replays load previously set as uncacheable and notices
it is now flagged as cacheable, leads to a panic.
This patch implements takeOverFrom() functionality for the ARM TLBs
to preserve flag values when switching from atomic -> detailed.
For the o3, add instruction mix (OpClass) histogram at commit (stats
also already collected at issue). For the simple CPUs we add a
histogram of executed instructions
Allow the specification of a socket ID for every core that is reflected in the
MPIDR field in ARM systems. This allows studying multi-socket / cluster
systems with ARM CPUs.
In the O3 LSQ, data read/written is printed out in DPRINTFs. However,
the data field is treated as a character string with a null terminated.
However the data field is not encoded this way. This patch removes
that possibility by removing the data part of the print.
O3CPU has a compile-time maximum width set in o3/impl.hh, but checking
the configuration against this limit was not implemented anywhere
except for fetch. Configuring a wider pipe than the limit can silently
cause various issues during the simulation. This patch adds the proper
checking in the constructor of the various pipeline stages.
A number of calls to isEmpty() and numFreeEntries()
should be thread-specific.
In cpu.cc, the fact that tid is /*commented*/ out is a bug. Say the rob
has instructions from thread 0 (isEmpty() returns false), and none from
thread 1. If we are trying to squash all of thread 1, then
readTailInst(thread 1) will be called because rob->isEmpty() returns
false. The result is end_it is not in the list and the while
statement loops indefinitely back over the cpu's instList.
In iew_impl.hh, all threads are told they have the entire remaining IQ, when
each thread actually has a certain allocation. The result is extra stalls at
the iew dispatch stage which the rename stage usually takes care of.
In commit_impl.hh, rob->readHeadInst(thread 1) can be called if the rob only
contains instructions from thread 0. This returns a dummyInst (which may work
since we are trying to squash all instructions, but hardly seems like the right
way to do it).
In rob_impl.hh this fix skips the rest of the function more frequently and is
more efficient.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
Simulating a SMP or multicore requires devices to be shared between
multiple KVM vCPUs. This means that locking is required when accessing
devices. This changeset adds the necessary locking to allow devices to
execute correctly. It is implemented by temporarily migrating the KVM
CPU to the VM's (and devices) event queue when handling
MMIO. Similarly, the VM migrates to the interrupt controller's event
queue when delivering an interrupt.
The support for fast-forwarding of multicore simulations added by this
changeset assumes that all devices in a system are simulated in the
same thread and each vCPU has its own thread. Special care must be
taken to ensure that devices living under the CPU in the object
hierarchy (e.g., the interrupt controller) do not inherit the parent
CPUs thread and are assigned to device thread. The KvmVM object is
assumed to live in the same thread as the other devices in the system.
This patch fixes violation of TSO in the O3CPU, as all loads must be
ordered with all other loads. In the LQ, if a snoop is observed, all
subsequent loads need to be squashed if the system is TSO.
Prior to this patch, the following case could be violated:
P0 | P1 ;
MOV [x],mail=/usr/spool/mail/nilay | MOV EAX,[y] ;
MOV [y],mail=/usr/spool/mail/nilay | MOV EBX,[x] ;
exists (1:EAX=1 /\ 1:EBX=0) [is a violation]
The problem was found using litmus [http://diy.inria.fr].
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu
This patch enables a new 'DRAM' mode to the existing traffic
generator, catered to generate specific requests to DRAM based on
required hit length (stride size) and bank utilization. It is an add on
to the Random mode.
The basic idea is to control how many successive packets target the
same page, and how many banks are being used in parallel. This gives a
two-dimensional space that stresses different aspects of the DRAM
timing.
The configuration file needed to use this patch has to be changed as
follow: (reference to Random Mode, LPDDR3 memory type)
'STATE 0 10000000000 RANDOM 50 0 134217728 64 3004 5002 0'
-> 'STATE 0 10000000000 DRAM 50 0 134217728 32 3004 5002 0 96 1024 8 6 1'
The last 4 parameters to be added are:
<stride size (bytes), page size(bytes), number of banks available in DRAM,
number of banks to be utilized, address mapping scheme>
The address mapping information is used to get the stride address
stream of the specified size and to know where to find the bank
bits. The configuration file has a parameter where '0'-> RoCoRaBaCh,
'1'-> RoRaBaCoCh/RoRaBaChCo address-mapping schemes. Note that the
generator currently assumes a single channel and a single rank. This
is to avoid overwhelming the traffic generator with information about
the memory organisation.
Prevent incomplete configuration of TrafficGen class from causing
segmentation faults. If an 'INIT' line is not present in the
configuration file then the currState variable will remain
uninitialized which may result in a crash.
KVM used to use two signals, one for instruction count exits and one
for timer exits. There is really no need to distinguish between the
two since they only trigger exits from KVM. This changeset unifies and
renames the signals and adds a method, kick(), that can be used to
raise the control signal in the vCPU thread. It also removes the early
timer warning since we do not normally see if the signal was
delivered.
--HG--
extra : rebase_source : cd0e45ca90894c3d6f6aa115b9b06a1d8f0fda4d
gem5 seems to store the PC as RIP+CS_BASE. This is not what KVM
expects, so we need to subtract CS_BASE prior to transferring the PC
into KVM. This changeset adds the necessary PC manipulation and
refactors thread context updates slightly to avoid reading registers
multiple times from KVM.
--HG--
extra : rebase_source : 3f0569dca06a1fcd8694925f75c8918d954ada44
This changeset adds support for INIT and STARTUP IPI handling. We
currently handle both of these interrupts in gem5 and transfer the
state to KVM. Since we do not have a BIOS loaded, we pretend that the
INIT interrupt suspends the CPU after reset.
--HG--
extra : rebase_source : 7f3b25f3801d68f668b6cd91eaf50d6f48ee2a6a
When transferring segment registers into kvm, we need to find the
value of the unusable bit. We used to assume that this could be
inferred from the selector since segments are generally unusable if
their selector is 0. This assumption breaks in some weird corner
cases. Instead, we just assume that segments are always usable. This
is what qemu does so it should work.
Signal handlers in KVM are controlled per thread and should be
initialized from the thread that is going to execute the CPU. This
changeset moves the initialization call from startup() to
startupThread().
A copyRegs() function is added to MIPS utilities
to copy architectural state from the old CPU to
the new CPU during fast-forwarding. This
addition alone enables fast-forwarding for the
o3 cpu model running MIPS.
The patch also adds takeOverFrom() and
drainResume() functions to the InOrderCPU to
enable it to take over from another CPU. This
change enables fast-forwarding for the inorder
cpu model running MIPS, but not for Alpha.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
The introduction of parallel event queues added most of the support
needed to run multiple VMs (systems) within the same gem5
instance. This changeset fixes up signal delivery so that KVM's
control signals are delivered to the thread that executes the CPU's
event queue. Specifically:
* Timers and counters are now initialized from a separate method
(startupThread) that is scheduled as the first event in the
thread-specific event queue. This ensures that they are
initialized from the thread that is going to execute the CPUs
event queue and enables signal delivery to the right thread when
exiting from KVM.
* The POSIX-timer-based KVM timer (used to force exits from KVM) has
been updated to deliver signals to the thread that's executing KVM
instead of the process (thread is undefined in that case). This
assumes that the timer is instantiated from the thread that is
going to execute the KVM vCPU.
* Signal masking is now done using pthread_sigmask instead of
sigprocmask. The behavior of the latter is undefined in threaded
applications.
* Since signal masks can be inherited, make sure to actively unmask
the control signals when setting up the KVM signal mask.
There are currently no facilities to multiplex between multiple KVM
CPUs in the same event queue, we are therefore limited to
configurations where there is only one KVM CPU per event queue. In
practice, this means that multi-system configurations can be
simulated, but not multiple CPUs in a shared-memory configuration.
This changesets adds branch predictor support to the
BaseSimpleCPU. The simple CPUs normally don't need a branch predictor,
however, there are at least two cases where it can be desirable:
1) A simple CPU can be used to warm the branch predictor of an O3
CPU before switching to the slower O3 model.
2) The simple CPU can be used as a quick way of evaluating/debugging
new branch predictors since it exposes branch predictor
statistics.
Limitations:
* Since the simple CPU doesn't speculate, only one instruction will
be active in the branch predictor at a time (i.e., the branch
predictor will never see speculative branches).
* The outcome of a branch prediction does not affect the performance
of the simple CPU.
