This patch changes the cache-related latencies from an absolute time
expressed in Ticks, to a number of cycles that can be scaled with the
clock period of the caches. Ultimately this patch serves to enable
future work that involves dynamic frequency scaling. As an immediate
benefit it also makes it more convenient to specify cache performance
without implicitly assuming a specific CPU core operating frequency.
The stat blocked_cycles that actually counter in ticks is now updated
to count in cycles.
As the timing is now rounded to the clock edges of the cache, there
are some regressions that change. Plenty of them have very minor
changes, whereas some regressions with a short run-time are perturbed
quite significantly. A follow-on patch updates all the statistics for
the regressions.
This patch unifies the full-system regression config scripts and uses
the BaseCPU convenience method addTwoLevelCacheHierarchy to connect up
the L1s and L2, and create the bus inbetween.
The patch is a step on the way to use the clock period to express the
cache latencies, as the CPU is now the parent of the L1, L2 and L1-L2
bus, and these modules thus use the CPU clock.
The patch does not change the value of any stats, but plenty names,
and a follow-up patch contains the update to the stats, chaning
system.l2c to system.cpu.l2cache.
In the current caches the hit latency is paid twice on a miss. This patch lets
a configurable response latency be set of the cache for the backward path.
This patch introduces a class hierarchy of buses, a non-coherent one,
and a coherent one, splitting the existing bus functionality. By doing
so it also enables further specialisation of the two types of buses.
A non-coherent bus connects a number of non-snooping masters and
slaves, and routes the request and response packets based on the
address. The request packets issued by the master connected to a
non-coherent bus could still snoop in caches attached to a coherent
bus, as is the case with the I/O bus and memory bus in most system
configurations. No snoops will, however, reach any master on the
non-coherent bus itself. The non-coherent bus can be used as a
template for modelling PCI, PCIe, and non-coherent AMBA and OCP buses,
and is typically used for the I/O buses.
A coherent bus connects a number of (potentially) snooping masters and
slaves, and routes the request and response packets based on the
address, and also forwards all requests to the snoopers and deals with
the snoop responses. The coherent bus can be used as a template for
modelling QPI, HyperTransport, ACE and coherent OCP buses, and is
typically used for the L1-to-L2 buses and as the main system
interconnect.
The configuration scripts are updated to use a NoncoherentBus for all
peripheral and I/O buses.
A bit of minor tidying up has also been done.
--HG--
rename : src/mem/bus.cc => src/mem/coherent_bus.cc
rename : src/mem/bus.hh => src/mem/coherent_bus.hh
rename : src/mem/bus.cc => src/mem/noncoherent_bus.cc
rename : src/mem/bus.hh => src/mem/noncoherent_bus.hh
This patch classifies all ports in Python as either Master or Slave
and enforces a binding of master to slave. Conceptually, a master (such
as a CPU or DMA port) issues requests, and receives responses, and
conversely, a slave (such as a memory or a PIO device) receives
requests and sends back responses. Currently there is no
differentiation between coherent and non-coherent masters and slaves.
The classification as master/slave also involves splitting the dual
role port of the bus into a master and slave port and updating all the
system assembly scripts to use the appropriate port. Similarly, the
interrupt devices have to have their int_port split into a master and
slave port. The intdev and its children have minimal changes to
facilitate the extra port.
Note that this patch does not enforce any port typing in the C++
world, it merely ensures that the Python objects have a notion of the
port roles and are connected in an appropriate manner. This check is
carried when two ports are connected, e.g. bus.master =
memory.port. The following patches will make use of the
classifications and specialise the C++ ports into masters and slaves.
This patch makes the bus bridge uni-directional and specialises the
bus ports to be a master port and a slave port. This greatly
simplifies the assumptions on both sides as either port only has to
deal with requests or responses. The following patches introduce the
notion of master and slave ports, and would not be possible without
this split of responsibilities.
In making the bridge unidirectional, the address range mechanism of
the bridge is also changed. For the cases where communication is
taking place both ways, an additional bridge is needed. This causes
issues with the existing mechanism, as the busses cannot determine
when to stop iterating the address updates from the two bridges. To
avoid this issue, and also greatly simplify the specification, the
bridge now has a fixed set of address ranges, specified at creation
time.
