Fix a case in the O3 CPU where the decode stage blocks and unblocks in a
single cycle sending both signals to fetch which causes an assert or worse.
The previous check could never work before since the status was set to Blocked
before a test for the status being Unblocking was executed.
Check if an instruction just enabled interrupts and we've previously had an
interrupt pending that was not handled because interrupts were subsequently
disabled before the pipeline reached a place to handle the interrupt. In that
case squash now to make sure the interrupt is handled.
This patch moves the branch predictor files in the o3 and inorder directories
to src/cpu/pred. This allows sharing the branch predictor across different
cpu models.
This patch was originally posted by Timothy Jones in July 2010
but never made it to the repository.
--HG--
rename : src/cpu/o3/bpred_unit.cc => src/cpu/pred/bpred_unit.cc
rename : src/cpu/o3/bpred_unit.hh => src/cpu/pred/bpred_unit.hh
rename : src/cpu/o3/bpred_unit_impl.hh => src/cpu/pred/bpred_unit_impl.hh
rename : src/cpu/o3/sat_counter.hh => src/cpu/pred/sat_counter.hh
There was an issue w/ the rename logic, which would assign a previous physical
register to the ZeroReg architectural register in x86. This issue was giving
problems for instructions squashed in threads w/ ID different from 0,
sometimes allowing non-mispredicted instructions to obtain a value different
from zero when reading the zeroReg.
The changes made by the changeset 270c9a75e91f do not work well with switching
of cpus. The problem is that decoder for the old thread context holds state
that is not taken over by the new decoder.
This patch adds a takeOverFrom() function to Decoder class in each ISA. Except
for x86, functions in other ISAs are blank. For x86, the function copies state
from the old decoder to the new decoder.
Move the increment/decrement of wbOutstanding outside of the comparison
in incrWb and decrWb in the IEW. This also fixes a compiler bug with gcc
4.4.7, which incorrectly optimizes "-- ==" as "-=".
The changes made by the changeset 9376 were not quite correct. The patch made
changes to the code which resulted in decoder not getting initialized correctly
when the state was restored from a checkpoint.
This patch adds a startup function to each ISA object. For x86, this function
sets the required state in the decoder. For other ISAs, the function is empty
right now.
Cleanup the serialization code for the simple CPUs and the O3 CPU. The
CPU-specific code has been replaced with a (un)serializeThread that
serializes the thread state / context of a specific thread. Assuming
that the thread state class uses the CPU-specific thread state uses
the base thread state serialization code, this allows us to restore a
checkpoint with any of the CPU models.
Previously, the O3 CPU could stop in the middle of a microcode
sequence. This patch makes sure that the pipeline stops when it has
committed a normal instruction or exited from a microcode
sequence. Additionally, it makes sure that the pipeline has no
instructions in flight when it is drained, which should make draining
more robust.
Draining is controlled in the commit stage, which checks if the next
PC after a committed instruction is in microcode. If this isn't the
case, it requests a squash of all instructions after that the
instruction that just committed and immediately signals a drain stall
to the fetch stage. The CPU then continues to execute until the
pipeline and all associated buffers are empty.
The thread context handover code used to break when multiple handovers
were performed during the same quiesce period. Previously, the thread
contexts would assign the TC pointer in the old quiesce event to the
new TC. This obviously broke in cases where multiple switches were
performed within the same quiesce period, in which case the TC pointer
in the quiesce event would point to an old CPU.
The new implementation deschedules pending quiesce events in the old
TC and schedules a new quiesce event in the new TC. The code has been
refactored to remove most of the code duplication.
Commit can currently both commit and squash in the same cycle. This
confuses other stages since the signals coming from the commit stage
can only signal either a squash or a commit in a cycle. This changeset
changes the behavior of squashAfter so that it commits all
instructions, including the instruction that requested the squash, in
the first cycle and then starts to squash in the next cycle.
The defer_registration parameter is used to prevent a CPU from
initializing at startup, leaving it in the "switched out" mode. The
name of this parameter (and the help string) is confusing. This patch
renames it to switched_out, which should be more descriptive.
This patch cleans up the CPU switching functionality by making sure
that CPU models consistently call the parent on switchOut() and
takeOverFrom(). This has the following implications that might alter
current functionality:
* The call to BaseCPU::switchout() in the O3 CPU is moved from
signalDrained() (!) to switchOut().
* A call to BaseSimpleCPU::switchOut() is introduced in the simple
CPUs.
The O3 CPU used to copy its thread context to a SimpleThread in order
to do serialization. This was a bit of a hack involving two static
SimpleThread instances and a magic constructor that was only used by
the O3 CPU.
This patch moves the ThreadContext serialization code into two global
procedures that, in addition to the normal serialization parameters,
take a ThreadContext reference as a parameter. This allows us to reuse
the serialization code in all ThreadContext implementations.
The entire O3 pipeline used to be initialized from init(), which is
called before initState() or unserialize(). This causes the pipeline
to be initialized from an incorrect thread context. This doesn't
currently lead to correctness problems as instructions fetched from
the incorrect start PC will be squashed a few cycles after
initialization.
This patch will affect the regressions since the O3 CPU now issues its
first instruction fetch to the correct PC instead of 0x0.
Some architectures map registers differently depending on their mode
of operations. There is currently no architecture independent way of
accessing all registers. This patch introduces a flat register
interface to the ThreadContext class. This interface is useful, for
example, when serializing or copying thread contexts.
This patch adds checks to all CPU models to make sure that the memory
system is in the correct mode at startup and when resuming after a
drain. Previously, we only checked that the memory system was in the
right mode when resuming. This is inadequate since this is a
configuration error that should be detected at startup as well as when
resuming. Additionally, since the check was done using an assert, it
wasn't performed when NDEBUG was set (e.g., the fast target).
The ISA class on stores the contents of ID registers on many
architectures. In order to make reset values of such registers
configurable, we make the class inherit from SimObject, which allows
us to use the normal generated parameter headers.
This patch introduces a Python helper method, BaseCPU.createThreads(),
which creates a set of ISAs for each of the threads in an SMT
system. Although it is currently only needed when creating
multi-threaded CPUs, it should always be called before instantiating
the system as this is an obvious place to configure ID registers
identifying a thread/CPU.
This patch unlocks the cpu-local monitor when the CPU sees a snoop to a locked
address. Previously we relied on the cache to handle the locking for us, however
some users on the gem5 mailing list reported a case where the cpu speculatively
executes a ll operation after a pending sc operation in the pipeline and that
makes the cache monitor valid. This should handle that case by invaliding the
local monitor.
isSyscall was originally created because during handling of a syscall in SE
mode the threadcontext had to be updated. However, in many places this is used
in FS mode (e.g. fault handlers) and the name doesn't make much sense. The
boolean actually stops gem5 from squashing speculative and non-committed state
when a write to a threadcontext happens, so re-name the variable to something
more appropriate
This interface is no longer used, and getting rid of it simplifies the
decoders and code that sets up the decoders. The thread context had been used
to read architectural state which was used to contextualize the instruction
memory as it came in. That was changed so that the state is now sent to the
decoders to keep locally if/when it changes. That's significantly more
efficient.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
globalHistoryBits, globalPredictorSize, and choicePredictorSize are decoupled.
globalHistoryBits controls how much history is kept, global and choice
predictor sizes control how much of that history is used when accessing
predictor tables. This way, global and choice predictors can actually be
different sizes, and it is no longer possible to walk off the predictor arrays
and cause a seg fault.
There are now individual thresholds for choice, global, and local saturating
counters, so that taken/not taken decisions are correct even when the
predictors' counters' sizes are different.
The interface for localPredictorSize has been removed from TournamentBP because
the value can be calculated from localHistoryBits.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
This patch moves the draining interface from SimObject to a separate
class that can be used by any object needing draining. However,
objects not visible to the Python code (i.e., objects not deriving
from SimObject) still depend on their parents informing them when to
drain. This patch also gets rid of the CountedDrainEvent (which isn't
really an event) and replaces it with a DrainManager.
SWIG needs a complete declaration of all wrapped objects. This patch
adds a header file with the DerivO3CPU class and includes it in the
SWIG interface.
--HG--
rename : src/cpu/o3/cpu_builder.cc => src/cpu/o3/deriv.cc
In order to create reliable SWIG wrappers, we need to include the
declaration of the wrapped class in the SWIG file. Previously, we
didn't expose the declaration of checker CPUs. This patch adds header
files for such CPUs and include them in the SWIG wrapper.
--HG--
rename : src/cpu/dummy_checker_builder.cc => src/cpu/dummy_checker.cc
rename : src/cpu/o3/checker_builder.cc => src/cpu/o3/checker.cc
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 is a first step to using Cycles as a parameter type. The
main affected modules are the CPUs and the Ruby caches. There are
definitely plenty more places that are affected, but this patch serves
as a starting point to making the transition.
An important part of this patch is to actually enable parameters to be
specified as Param.Cycles which involves some changes to params.py.
This patch addresses the comments and feedback on the preceding patch
that reworks the clocks and now more clearly shows where cycles
(relative cycle counts) are used to express time.
Instead of bumping the existing patch I chose to make this a separate
patch, merely to try and focus the discussion around a smaller set of
changes. The two patches will be pushed together though.
This changes done as part of this patch are mostly following directly
from the introduction of the wrapper class, and change enough code to
make things compile and run again. There are definitely more places
where int/uint/Tick is still used to represent cycles, and it will
take some time to chase them all down. Similarly, a lot of parameters
should be changed from Param.Tick and Param.Unsigned to
Param.Cycles.
In addition, the use of curTick is questionable as there should not be
an absolute cycle. Potential solutions can be built on top of this
patch. There is a similar situation in the o3 CPU where
lastRunningCycle is currently counting in Cycles, and is still an
absolute time. More discussion to be had in other words.
An additional change that would be appropriate in the future is to
perform a similar wrapping of Tick and probably also introduce a
Ticks class along with suitable operators for all these classes.
This patch introduces the notion of a clock update function that aims
to avoid costly divisions when turning the current tick into a
cycle. Each clocked object advances a private (hidden) cycle member
and a tick member and uses these to implement functions for getting
the tick of the next cycle, or the tick of a cycle some time in the
future.
In the different modules using the clocks, changes are made to avoid
counting in ticks only to later translate to cycles. There are a few
oddities in how the O3 and inorder CPU count idle cycles, as seen by a
few locations where a cycle is subtracted in the calculation. This is
done such that the regression does not change any stats, but should be
revisited in a future patch.
Another, much needed, change that is not done as part of this patch is
to introduce a new typedef uint64_t Cycle to be able to at least hint
at the unit of the variables counting Ticks vs Cycles. This will be
done as a follow-up patch.
As an additional follow up, the thread context still uses ticks for
the book keeping of last activate and last suspend and this should
probably also be changed into cycles as well.
This patch removes the NACK frrom the packet as there is no longer any
module in the system that issues them (the bridge was the only one and
the previous patch removes that).
The handling of NACKs was mostly avoided throughout the code base, by
using e.g. panic or assert false, but in a few locations the NACKs
were actually dealt with (although NACKs never occured in any of the
regressions). Most notably, the DMA port will now never receive a NACK
and the backoff time is thus never changed. As a consequence, the
entire backoff mechanism (similar to a PCI bus) is now removed and the
DMA port entirely relies on the bus performing the arbitration and
issuing a retry when appropriate. This is more in line with e.g. PCIe.
Surprisingly, this patch has no impact on any of the regressions. As
mentioned in the patch that removes the NACK from the bridge, a
follow-up patch should change the request and response buffer size for
at least one regression to also verify that the system behaves as
expected when the bridge fills up.
This patch removes the overloading of the parameter, which seems both
redundant, and possibly incorrect.
The inorder CPU is particularly interesting as it uses a different
name for the parameter, and never make any use of it internally.
This patch makes the Tick unsigned and removes the UTick typedef. The
ticks should never be negative, and there was only one major issue
with removing it, caused by the o3 CPU using a -1 as an initial value.
The patch has no impact on any regressions.
This patch fixes some problems with the drain/switchout functionality
for the O3 cpu and for the ARM ISA and adds some useful debug print
statements.
This is an incremental fix as there are still a few bugs/mem leaks with the
switchout code. Particularly when switching from an O3CPU to a
TimingSimpleCPU. However, when switching from O3 to O3 cores with the ARM ISA
I haven't encountered any more assertion failures; now the kernel will
typically panic inside of simulation.
when using the checker i ran into problems where an instruction reading the
cpu id register failed because the ids did not match, and hence, the result
of the instruction did not match. this patch ensures that the ids match so
this instruction does not fail. this problem only seemed to manifest itself
when multiple cores were in the system, either multi-core, or extra switched-
out cores present in the system.
This patch is a first step to align the port names used in the Python
world and the C++ world. Ultimately it serves to make the use of
config.json together with output from the simulation easier, including
post-processing of statistics.
Most notably, the CPU, cache, and bus is addressed in this patch, and
there might be other ports that should be updated accordingly. The
dash name separator has also been replaced with a "." which is what is
used to concatenate the names in python, and a separation is made
between the master and slave port in the bus.
This patch is the result of static analysis identifying a number of
memory leaks. The leaks are all benign as they are a result of not
deallocating memory in the desctructor. The fix still has value as it
removes false positives in the static analysis.
Add new flag (named pushedRAS) in the PredictorHistory structure.
This flag tracks whether the RAS has been pushed or not during a prediction.
Then, in the squash function it is used to pop the RAS if necessary.
While FastAlloc provides a small performance increase (~1.5%) over regular malloc it isn't thread safe.
After removing FastAlloc and using tcmalloc I've seen a performance increase of 12% over libc malloc
when running twolf for ARM.
These classes are always used together, and merging them will give the ISAs
more flexibility in how they cache things and manage the process.
--HG--
rename : src/arch/x86/predecoder_tables.cc => src/arch/x86/decoder_tables.cc
