Currently, the atomic CPU can be in the middle of a microcode sequence
when it is drained. This leads to two problems:
* When switching to a hardware virtualized CPU, we obviously can't
execute gem5 microcode.
* Since curMacroStaticInst is populated when executing microcode,
repeated switching between CPUs executing microcode leads to
incorrect execution.
After applying this patch, the CPU will be on a proper instruction
boundary, which means that it is safe to switch to any CPU model
(including hardware virtualized ones). This changeset fixes a bug
where the multiple switches to the same atomic CPU sometimes corrupts
the target state because of dangling pointers to the currently
executing microinstruction.
Note: This changeset moves tick event descheduling from switchOut() to
drain(), which makes timing consistent between just draining a system
and draining /and/ switching between two atomic CPUs. This makes
debugging quite a lot easier (execution traces get the same timing),
but the latency of the last instruction before a drain will not be
accounted for correctly (it will always be 1 cycle).
Note 2: This changeset removes so_state variable, the locked variable,
and the tickEvent from checkpoints since none of them contain state
that needs to be preserved across checkpoints. The so_state is made
redundant because we don't use the drain state variable anymore, the
lock variable should never be set when the system is drained, and the
tick event isn't scheduled.
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.
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).
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.
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 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.
initCPU() will be called to initialize switched out CPUs for the simple and
inorder CPU models. this patch prevents those CPUs from being initialized
because they should get their state from the active CPU when it is switched
out.
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
This patch simplifies the packet by removing the broadcast flag and
instead more firmly relying on (and enforcing) the semantics of
transactions in the classic memory system, i.e. request packets are
routed from a master to a slave based on the address, and when they
are created they have neither a valid source, nor destination. On
their way to the slave, the request packet is updated with a source
field for all modules that multiplex packets from multiple master
(e.g. a bus). When a request packet is turned into a response packet
(at the final slave), it moves the potentially populated source field
to the destination field, and the response packet is routed through
any multiplexing components back to the master based on the
destination field.
Modules that connect multiplexing components, such as caches and
bridges store any existing source and destination field in the sender
state as a stack (just as before).
The packet constructor is simplified in that there is no longer a need
to pass the Packet::Broadcast as the destination (this was always the
case for the classic memory system). In the case of Ruby, rather than
using the parameter to the constructor we now rely on setDest, as
there is already another three-argument constructor in the packet
class.
In many places where the packet information was printed as part of
DPRINTFs, request packets would be printed with a numeric "dest" that
would always be -1 (Broadcast) and that field is now removed from the
printing.
This patch removes the assumption on having on single instance of
PhysicalMemory, and enables a distributed memory where the individual
memories in the system are each responsible for a single contiguous
address range.
All memories inherit from an AbstractMemory that encompasses the basic
behaviuor of a random access memory, and provides untimed access
methods. What was previously called PhysicalMemory is now
SimpleMemory, and a subclass of AbstractMemory. All future types of
memory controllers should inherit from AbstractMemory.
To enable e.g. the atomic CPU and RubyPort to access the now
distributed memory, the system has a wrapper class, called
PhysicalMemory that is aware of all the memories in the system and
their associated address ranges. This class thus acts as an
infinitely-fast bus and performs address decoding for these "shortcut"
accesses. Each memory can specify that it should not be part of the
global address map (used e.g. by the functional memories by some
testers). Moreover, each memory can be configured to be reported to
the OS configuration table, useful for populating ATAG structures, and
any potential ACPI tables.
Checkpointing support currently assumes that all memories have the
same size and organisation when creating and resuming from the
checkpoint. A future patch will enable a more flexible
re-organisation.
--HG--
rename : src/mem/PhysicalMemory.py => src/mem/AbstractMemory.py
rename : src/mem/PhysicalMemory.py => src/mem/SimpleMemory.py
rename : src/mem/physical.cc => src/mem/abstract_mem.cc
rename : src/mem/physical.hh => src/mem/abstract_mem.hh
rename : src/mem/physical.cc => src/mem/simple_mem.cc
rename : src/mem/physical.hh => src/mem/simple_mem.hh
This patch removes the physmem_port from the Atomic CPU and instead
uses the system pointer to access the physmem when using the fastmem
option. The system already keeps track of the physmem and the valid
memory address ranges, and with this patch we merely make use of that
existing functionality. As a result of this change, the overloaded
getMasterPort in the Atomic CPU can be removed, thus unifying the CPUs.
This patch introduces the notion of a master and slave port in the C++
code, thus bringing the previous classification from the Python
classes into the corresponding simulation objects and memory objects.
The patch enables us to classify behaviours into the two bins and add
assumptions and enfore compliance, also simplifying the two
interfaces. As a starting point, isSnooping is confined to a master
port, and getAddrRanges to slave ports. More of these specilisations
are to come in later patches.
The getPort function is not getMasterPort and getSlavePort, and
returns a port reference rather than a pointer as NULL would never be
a valid return value. The default implementation of these two
functions is placed in MemObject, and calls fatal.
The one drawback with this specific patch is that it requires some
code duplication, e.g. QueuedPort becomes QueuedMasterPort and
QueuedSlavePort, and BusPort becomes BusMasterPort and BusSlavePort
(avoiding multiple inheritance). With the later introduction of the
port interfaces, moving the functionality outside the port itself, a
lot of the duplicated code will disappear again.
This patch unifies where initMemProxies is called, in the init()
method of each BaseCPU subclass, before TheISA::initCPU is
called. Moreover, it also ensures that initMemProxies is called in
both full-system and syscall-emulation mode, thus unifying also across
the modes. An additional check is added in the ThreadState to ensure
that initMemProxies is only called once.
This patch continues the unification of how the different CPU models
create and share their instruction and data ports. Most importantly,
it forces every CPU to have an instruction and a data port, and gives
these ports explicit getters in the BaseCPU (getDataPort and
getInstPort). The patch helps in simplifying the code, make
assumptions more explicit, andfurther ease future patches related to
the CPU ports.
The biggest changes are in the in-order model (that was not modified
in the previous unification patch), which now moves the ports from the
CacheUnit to the CPU. It also distinguishes the instruction fetch and
load-store unit from the rest of the resources, and avoids the use of
indices and casting in favour of keeping track of these two units
explicitly (since they are always there anyways). The atomic, timing
and O3 model simply return references to their already existing ports.
This change adds a master id to each request object which can be
used identify every device in the system that is capable of issuing a request.
This is part of the way to removing the numCpus+1 stats in the cache and
replacing them with the master ids. This is one of a series of changes
that make way for the stats output to be changed to python.
This patch adds the necessary flags to the SConstruct and SConscript
files for compiling using clang 2.9 and later (on Ubuntu et al and OSX
XCode 4.2), and also cleans up a bunch of compiler warnings found by
clang. Most of the warnings are related to hidden virtual functions,
comparisons with unsigneds >= 0, and if-statements with empty
bodies. A number of mismatches between struct and class are also
fixed. clang 2.8 is not working as it has problems with class names
that occur in multiple namespaces (e.g. Statistics in
kernel_stats.hh).
clang has a bug (http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=7247) which
causes confusion between the container std::set and the function
Packet::set, and this is currently addressed by not including the
entire namespace std, but rather selecting e.g. "using std::vector" in
the appropriate places.
This patch simplifies the address-range determination mechanism and
also unifies the naming across ports and devices. It further splits
the queries for determining if a port is snooping and what address
ranges it responds to (aiming towards a separation of
cache-maintenance ports and pure memory-mapped ports). Default
behaviours are such that most ports do not have to define isSnooping,
and master ports need not implement getAddrRanges.
This patch performs minimal changes to move the instruction and data
ports from specialised subclasses to the base CPU (to the largest
degree possible). Ultimately it servers to make the CPU(s) have a
well-defined interface to the memory sub-system.
Port proxies are used to replace non-structural ports, and thus enable
all ports in the system to correspond to a structural entity. This has
the advantage of accessing memory through the normal memory subsystem
and thus allowing any constellation of distributed memories, address
maps, etc. Most accesses are done through the "system port" that is
used for loading binaries, debugging etc. For the entities that belong
to the CPU, e.g. threads and thread contexts, they wrap the CPU data
port in a port proxy.
The following replacements are made:
FunctionalPort > PortProxy
TranslatingPort > SETranslatingPortProxy
VirtualPort > FSTranslatingPortProxy
--HG--
rename : src/mem/vport.cc => src/mem/fs_translating_port_proxy.cc
rename : src/mem/vport.hh => src/mem/fs_translating_port_proxy.hh
rename : src/mem/translating_port.cc => src/mem/se_translating_port_proxy.cc
rename : src/mem/translating_port.hh => src/mem/se_translating_port_proxy.hh
readBytes and writeBytes had the word "bytes" in their names because they
accessed blobs of bytes. This distinguished them from the read and write
functions which handled higher level data types. Because those functions don't
exist any more, this change renames readBytes and writeBytes to more general
names, readMem and writeMem, which reflect the fact that they are how you read
and write memory. This also makes their names more consistent with the
register reading/writing functions, although those are still read and set for
some reason.
At the same time, rename the trace flags to debug flags since they
have broader usage than simply tracing. This means that
--trace-flags is now --debug-flags and --trace-help is now --debug-help
This change speeds up booting, especially in MP cases, by not executing
udelay() on the core but instead skipping ahead tha amount of time that is being
delayed.
There may not be a formally correct spelling for the past tense of mmap, but
mmapped is the spelling Google doesn't try to autocorrect. This makes sense
because it mirrors the past tense of map->mapped and not the past tense of
cape->caped.
--HG--
rename : src/arch/alpha/mmaped_ipr.hh => src/arch/alpha/mmapped_ipr.hh
rename : src/arch/arm/mmaped_ipr.hh => src/arch/arm/mmapped_ipr.hh
rename : src/arch/mips/mmaped_ipr.hh => src/arch/mips/mmapped_ipr.hh
rename : src/arch/power/mmaped_ipr.hh => src/arch/power/mmapped_ipr.hh
rename : src/arch/sparc/mmaped_ipr.hh => src/arch/sparc/mmapped_ipr.hh
rename : src/arch/x86/mmaped_ipr.hh => src/arch/x86/mmapped_ipr.hh
This change is a low level and pervasive reorganization of how PCs are managed
in M5. Back when Alpha was the only ISA, there were only 2 PCs to worry about,
the PC and the NPC, and the lsb of the PC signaled whether or not you were in
PAL mode. As other ISAs were added, we had to add an NNPC, micro PC and next
micropc, x86 and ARM introduced variable length instruction sets, and ARM
started to keep track of mode bits in the PC. Each CPU model handled PCs in
its own custom way that needed to be updated individually to handle the new
dimensions of variability, or, in the case of ARMs mode-bit-in-the-pc hack,
the complexity could be hidden in the ISA at the ISA implementation's expense.
Areas like the branch predictor hadn't been updated to handle branch delay
slots or micropcs, and it turns out that had introduced a significant (10s of
percent) performance bug in SPARC and to a lesser extend MIPS. Rather than
perpetuate the problem by reworking O3 again to handle the PC features needed
by x86, this change was introduced to rework PC handling in a more modular,
transparent, and hopefully efficient way.
PC type:
Rather than having the superset of all possible elements of PC state declared
in each of the CPU models, each ISA defines its own PCState type which has
exactly the elements it needs. A cross product of canned PCState classes are
defined in the new "generic" ISA directory for ISAs with/without delay slots
and microcode. These are either typedef-ed or subclassed by each ISA. To read
or write this structure through a *Context, you use the new pcState() accessor
which reads or writes depending on whether it has an argument. If you just
want the address of the current or next instruction or the current micro PC,
you can get those through read-only accessors on either the PCState type or
the *Contexts. These are instAddr(), nextInstAddr(), and microPC(). Note the
move away from readPC. That name is ambiguous since it's not clear whether or
not it should be the actual address to fetch from, or if it should have extra
bits in it like the PAL mode bit. Each class is free to define its own
functions to get at whatever values it needs however it needs to to be used in
ISA specific code. Eventually Alpha's PAL mode bit could be moved out of the
PC and into a separate field like ARM.
These types can be reset to a particular pc (where npc = pc +
sizeof(MachInst), nnpc = npc + sizeof(MachInst), upc = 0, nupc = 1 as
appropriate), printed, serialized, and compared. There is a branching()
function which encapsulates code in the CPU models that checked if an
instruction branched or not. Exactly what that means in the context of branch
delay slots which can skip an instruction when not taken is ambiguous, and
ideally this function and its uses can be eliminated. PCStates also generally
know how to advance themselves in various ways depending on if they point at
an instruction, a microop, or the last microop of a macroop. More on that
later.
Ideally, accessing all the PCs at once when setting them will improve
performance of M5 even though more data needs to be moved around. This is
because often all the PCs need to be manipulated together, and by getting them
all at once you avoid multiple function calls. Also, the PCs of a particular
thread will have spatial locality in the cache. Previously they were grouped
by element in arrays which spread out accesses.
Advancing the PC:
The PCs were previously managed entirely by the CPU which had to know about PC
semantics, try to figure out which dimension to increment the PC in, what to
set NPC/NNPC, etc. These decisions are best left to the ISA in conjunction
with the PC type itself. Because most of the information about how to
increment the PC (mainly what type of instruction it refers to) is contained
in the instruction object, a new advancePC virtual function was added to the
StaticInst class. Subclasses provide an implementation that moves around the
right element of the PC with a minimal amount of decision making. In ISAs like
Alpha, the instructions always simply assign NPC to PC without having to worry
about micropcs, nnpcs, etc. The added cost of a virtual function call should
be outweighed by not having to figure out as much about what to do with the
PCs and mucking around with the extra elements.
One drawback of making the StaticInsts advance the PC is that you have to
actually have one to advance the PC. This would, superficially, seem to
require decoding an instruction before fetch could advance. This is, as far as
I can tell, realistic. fetch would advance through memory addresses, not PCs,
perhaps predicting new memory addresses using existing ones. More
sophisticated decisions about control flow would be made later on, after the
instruction was decoded, and handed back to fetch. If branching needs to
happen, some amount of decoding needs to happen to see that it's a branch,
what the target is, etc. This could get a little more complicated if that gets
done by the predecoder, but I'm choosing to ignore that for now.
Variable length instructions:
To handle variable length instructions in x86 and ARM, the predecoder now
takes in the current PC by reference to the getExtMachInst function. It can
modify the PC however it needs to (by setting NPC to be the PC + instruction
length, for instance). This could be improved since the CPU doesn't know if
the PC was modified and always has to write it back.
ISA parser:
To support the new API, all PC related operand types were removed from the
parser and replaced with a PCState type. There are two warts on this
implementation. First, as with all the other operand types, the PCState still
has to have a valid operand type even though it doesn't use it. Second, using
syntax like PCS.npc(target) doesn't work for two reasons, this looks like the
syntax for operand type overriding, and the parser can't figure out if you're
reading or writing. Instructions that use the PCS operand (which I've
consistently called it) need to first read it into a local variable,
manipulate it, and then write it back out.
Return address stack:
The return address stack needed a little extra help because, in the presence
of branch delay slots, it has to merge together elements of the return PC and
the call PC. To handle that, a buildRetPC utility function was added. There
are basically only two versions in all the ISAs, but it didn't seem short
enough to put into the generic ISA directory. Also, the branch predictor code
in O3 and InOrder were adjusted so that they always store the PC of the actual
call instruction in the RAS, not the next PC. If the call instruction is a
microop, the next PC refers to the next microop in the same macroop which is
probably not desirable. The buildRetPC function advances the PC intelligently
to the next macroop (in an ISA specific way) so that that case works.
Change in stats:
There were no change in stats except in MIPS and SPARC in the O3 model. MIPS
runs in about 9% fewer ticks. SPARC runs with 30%-50% fewer ticks, which could
likely be improved further by setting call/return instruction flags and taking
advantage of the RAS.
TODO:
Add != operators to the PCState classes, defined trivially to be !(a==b).
Smooth out places where PCs are split apart, passed around, and put back
together later. I think this might happen in SPARC's fault code. Add ISA
specific constructors that allow setting PC elements without calling a bunch
of accessors. Try to eliminate the need for the branching() function. Factor
out Alpha's PAL mode pc bit into a separate flag field, and eliminate places
where it's blindly masked out or tested in the PC.
Also move the "Fault" reference counted pointer type into a separate file,
sim/fault.hh. It would be better to name this less similarly to sim/faults.hh
to reduce confusion, but fault.hh matches the name of the type. We could change
Fault to FaultPtr to match other pointer types, and then changing the name of
the file would make more sense.
These recordEvent() calls could cause crashes since they
access the req pointer after it's potentially been
deleted during a failed translation call. (Similar
problem to the traceData bug fixed in the previous cset.)
Moving them above the translation call (as was done
recentlyi in cset 8b2b8e5e7d35) avoids the crash
but doesn't work, since at that point we don't know if
the access is uncached or not.
It's not clear why these calls are there, and no one
seems to use them, so we'll just delete them. If they
are needed, they should be moved to somewhere that's
guaranteed to be after the translation completes but
before the request is possibly deleted, e.g., in
finishTranslation().
Accessing traceData (to call setAddress() and/or setData())
after initiating a timing translation was causing crashes,
since a failed translation could delete the traceData
object before returning.
It turns out that there was never a need to access traceData
after initiating the translation, as the traced data was
always available earlier; this ordering was merely
historical. Furthermore, traceData->setAddress() and
traceData->setData() were being called both from the CPU
model and the ISA definition, often redundantly.
This patch standardizes all setAddress and setData calls
for memory instructions to be in the CPU models and not
in the ISA definition. It also moves those calls above
the translation calls to eliminate the crashes.
