We currently execute instructions in the guest and then handle any IO
request right after we break out of the virtualized environment. This
has the effect of executing IO requests in the exact same tick as the
first instruction in the sequence that was just run. There seem to be
cases where this simplification upsets some timing-sensitive devices.
This changeset splits execute and IO (and other services) across
multiple ticks. This is implemented by adding a separate
RunningService state to the CPU state machine. When a VM requires
service, it enters into this state and pending IO is then serviced in
the future instead of immediately. The delay between getting the
request and servicing it depends on the number of cycles executed in
the guest, which allows other components to catch up with the CPU.
Update the system's totalNumInst counter when exiting from KVM and
maintain an internal absolute instruction count instead of relying on
the one from perf.
Some architectures have special registers in the guest that can be
used to do cycle accounting. This is generally preferrable since the
prevents the guest from seeing a non-monotonic clock. This changeset
adds a virtual method, getHostCycles(), that the architecture-specific
code can override to implement this functionallity. The default
implementation uses the hwCycles counter.
timer_create can apparently return -1 and set errno to EAGAIN if the
kernel suffered a temporary failure when allocating a timer. This
happens from time to time, so we need to handle it.
It is now required to initialize the thread context by calling
startup() on it. Failing to do so currently causes decoder in
x86-based CPUs to get very confused when restoring from checkpoints.
The CpuPort class was removed before the KVM patches were committed,
which means that the KVM interface currently doesn't compile. This
changeset adds the BaseKvmCPU::KVMCpuPort class which derives from
MasterPort. This class is used on the data and instruction ports
instead of the old CpuPort.
This changeset adds a 'numInsts' stat to the KVM-based CPU. It also
cleans up the variable names in kvmRun to make the distinction between
host cycles and estimated simulated cycles clearer. As a bonus
feature, it also fixes a warning (unreferenced variable) when
compiling in fast mode.
Add a debug print (when the Checkpoint debug flag is set) on serialize
and unserialize. Additionally, dump the KVM state before
serializing. The KVM state isn't dumped after unserializing since the
state is loaded lazily on the next KVM entry.
Device accesses are normally uncacheable. This change probably doesn't
make any difference since we normally disable caching when KVM is
active. However, there might be devices that check this, so we'd
better enable this flag to be safe.
This changeset adds support for m5 pseudo-ops when running in
kvm-mode. Unfortunately, we can't trap the normal gem5 co-processor
entry in KVM (it doesn't seem to be possible to trap accesses to
non-existing co-processors). We therefore use BZJ instructions to
cause a trap from virtualized mode into gem5. The BZJ instruction is
becomes a normal branch to the gem5 fallback code when running in
simulated mode, which means that this patch does not need to change
the ARM ISA-specific code.
Note: This requires a patched host kernel.
Architecture specific limitations:
* LPAE is currently not supported by gem5. We therefore panic if LPAE
is enabled when returning to gem5.
* The co-processor based interface to the architected timer is
unsupported. We can't support this due to limitations in the KVM
API on ARM.
* M5 ops are currently not supported. This requires either a kernel
hack or a memory mapped device that handles the guest<->m5
interface.
Add support for using the CPU cycle counter instead of a normal POSIX
timer to generate timed exits to gem5. This should, in theory, provide
better resolution when requesting timer signals.
The perf-based timer requires a fairly recent kernel since it requires
a working PERF_EVENT_IOC_PERIOD ioctl. This ioctl has existed in the
kernel for a long time, but it used to be completely broken due to an
inverted match when the kernel copied things from user
space. Additionally, the ioctl does not change the sample period
correctly on all kernel versions which implement it. It is currently
only known to work reliably on kernel version 3.7 and above on ARM.
Reduce the number of KVM->TC synchronizations by overloading the
getContext() method and only request an update when the TC is
requested as opposed to every time KVM returns to gem5.
This changeset introduces the architecture independent parts required
to support KVM-accelerated CPUs. It introduces two new simulation
objects:
KvmVM -- The KVM VM is a component shared between all CPUs in a shared
memory domain. It is typically instantiated as a child of the
system object in the simulation hierarchy. It provides access
to KVM VM specific interfaces.
BaseKvmCPU -- Abstract base class for all KVM-based CPUs. Architecture
dependent CPU implementations inherit from this class
and implement the following methods:
* updateKvmState() -- Update the
architecture-dependent KVM state from the gem5
thread context associated with the CPU.
* updateThreadContext() -- Update the thread context
from the architecture-dependent KVM state.
* dump() -- Dump the KVM state using (optional).
In order to deliver interrupts to the guest, CPU
implementations typically override the tick() method and
check for, and deliver, interrupts prior to entering
KVM.
Hardware-virutalized CPU currently have the following limitations:
* SE mode is not supported.
* PC events are not supported.
* Timing statistics are currently very limited. The current approach
simply scales the host cycles with a user-configurable factor.
* The simulated system must not contain any caches.
* Since cycle counts are approximate, there is no way to request an
exact number of cycles (or instructions) to be executed by the CPU.
* Hardware virtualized CPUs and gem5 CPUs must not execute at the
same time in the same simulator instance.
* Only single-CPU systems can be simulated.
* Remote GDB connections to the guest system are not supported.
Additionally, m5ops requires an architecture specific interface and
might not be supported.
