The Minor CPU currently doesn't drain properly when it is switched
out. This happens because Fetch 1 expects to be in the FetchHalted
state when it is drained. However, because the CPU is switched out, it
is stuck in the FetchWaitingForPC state. Fix this by ignoring drain
requests and returning DrainState::Drained from MinorCPU::drain() if
the CPU is switched out. This is always safe since a switched out CPU,
by definition, doesn't have any instructions in flight.
Minor currently activates thread 0 in startup() to work around an
issue where activateContext() is called from LiveProcess before the
process entry point is known. When activateContext() is called, Minor
creates a branch instruction to the process's entry point. The first
time it is called, the branch points to an undefined location (0). The
call in startup() updates the branch to point to the actual entry
point.
When instantiating a switched out Minor CPU, it still tries to
activate thread 0. This is clearly incorrect since a switched out CPU
can't have any active threads. This changeset adds a check to ensure
that the thread is active before reactivating it.
The drain refactor patches introduced a couple of bugs in the way
Minor handles draining. This patch fixes an incorrect assert and a
case of infinite recursion when the CPU signals drain done.
The drain() call currently passes around a DrainManager pointer, which
is now completely pointless since there is only ever one global
DrainManager in the system. It also contains vestiges from the time
when SimObjects had to keep track of their child objects that needed
draining.
This changeset moves all of the DrainState handling to the Drainable
base class and changes the drain() and drainResume() calls to reflect
this. Particularly, the drain() call has been updated to take no
parameters (the DrainManager argument isn't needed) and return a
DrainState instead of an unsigned integer (there is no point returning
anything other than 0 or 1 any more). Drainable objects should return
either DrainState::Draining (equivalent to returning 1 in the old
system) if they need more time to drain or DrainState::Drained
(equivalent to returning 0 in the old system) if they are already in a
consistent state. Returning DrainState::Running is considered an
error.
Drain done signalling is now done through the signalDrainDone() method
in the Drainable class instead of using the DrainManager directly. The
new call checks if the state of the object is DrainState::Draining
before notifying the drain manager. This means that it is safe to call
signalDrainDone() without first checking if the simulator has
requested draining. The intention here is to reduce the code needed to
implement draining in simple objects.
The drain state enum is currently a part of the Drainable
interface. The same state machine will be used by the DrainManager to
identify the global state of the simulator. Make the drain state a
global typed enum to better cater for this usage scenario.
Objects that are can be serialized are supposed to inherit from the
Serializable class. This class is meant to provide a unified API for
such objects. However, so far it has mainly been used by SimObjects
due to some fundamental design limitations. This changeset redesigns
to the serialization interface to make it more generic and hide the
underlying checkpoint storage. Specifically:
* Add a set of APIs to serialize into a subsection of the current
object. Previously, objects that needed this functionality would
use ad-hoc solutions using nameOut() and section name
generation. In the new world, an object that implements the
interface has the methods serializeSection() and
unserializeSection() that serialize into a named /subsection/ of
the current object. Calling serialize() serializes an object into
the current section.
* Move the name() method from Serializable to SimObject as it is no
longer needed for serialization. The fully qualified section name
is generated by the main serialization code on the fly as objects
serialize sub-objects.
* Add a scoped ScopedCheckpointSection helper class. Some objects
need to serialize data structures, that are not deriving from
Serializable, into subsections. Previously, this was done using
nameOut() and manual section name generation. To simplify this,
this changeset introduces a ScopedCheckpointSection() helper
class. When this class is instantiated, it adds a new /subsection/
and subsequent serialization calls during the lifetime of this
helper class happen inside this section (or a subsection in case
of nested sections).
* The serialize() call is now const which prevents accidental state
manipulation during serialization. Objects that rely on modifying
state can use the serializeOld() call instead. The default
implementation simply calls serialize(). Note: The old-style calls
need to be explicitly called using the
serializeOld()/serializeSectionOld() style APIs. These are used by
default when serializing SimObjects.
* Both the input and output checkpoints now use their own named
types. This hides underlying checkpoint implementation from
objects that need checkpointing and makes it easier to change the
underlying checkpoint storage code.
activate(), suspend(), and halt() used on thread contexts had an optional
delay parameter. However this parameter was often ignored. Also, when used,
the delay was seemily arbitrarily set to 0 or 1 cycle (no other delays were
ever specified). This patch removes the delay parameter and 'Events'
associated with them across all ISAs and cores. Unused activate logic
is also removed.
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
