The performance counting framework in Linux 3.2 and onwards supports
an attribute to exclude events generated by the host when running
KVM. Setting this attribute allows us to get more reliable
measurements of the guest machine. For example, on a highly loaded
system, the instruction counts from the guest can be severely
distorted by the host kernel (e.g., by page fault handlers).
This changeset introduces a check for the attribute and enables it in
the KVM CPU if present.
This patch adds support for simulating with multiple threads, each of
which operates on an event queue. Each sim object specifies which eventq
is would like to be on. A custom barrier implementation is being added
using which eventqs synchronize.
The patch was tested in two different configurations:
1. ruby_network_test.py: in this simulation L1 cache controllers receive
requests from the cpu. The requests are replied to immediately without
any communication taking place with any other level.
2. twosys-tsunami-simple-atomic: this configuration simulates a client-server
system which are connected by an ethernet link.
We still lack the ability to communicate using message buffers or ports. But
other things like simulation start and end, synchronizing after every quantum
are working.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish
the current implementation of the fetch buffer in the o3 cpu
is only allowed to be the size of a cache line. some
architectures, e.g., ARM, have fetch buffers smaller than a cache
line, see slide 22 at:
http://www.arm.com/files/pdf/at-exploring_the_design_of_the_cortex-a15.pdf
this patch allows the fetch buffer to be set to values smaller
than a cache line.
This patch fixes an issue in the checker CPU register indexing. The
code will not even compile using LTO as deep inlining causes the used
index to be outside the array bounds.
The output from the switcheroo tests is voluminous and
(because it includes timestamps) highly sensitive to
minor changes, leading to extremely large updates to the
reference outputs. This patch addresses this problem
by suppressing output from the tests. An internal
parameter can be set to enable the output. Wiring that
up to a command-line flag (perhaps even the rudimantary
-v/-q options in m5/main.py) is left for future work.
This patch fixes a number of stats accounting issues in the DRAM
controller. Most importantly, it separates the system interface and
DRAM interface so that it is clearer what the actual DRAM bandwidth
(and consequently utilisation) is.
This patch unifies the request selection across read and write queues
for FR-FCFS scheduling policy. It also fixes the request selection
code to prioritize the row hits present in the request queues over the
selection based on earliest bank availability.
This patch adds a basic adaptive version of the open-page policy that
guides the decision to keep open or close by looking at the contents
of the controller queues. If no row hits are found, and bank conflicts
are present, then the row is closed by means of an auto
precharge. This is a well-known technique that should improve
performance in most use-cases.
This patch removes the untimed while loop in the write scheduling
mechanism and now schedule commands taking into account the minimum
timing constraint. It also introduces an optimization to track write
queue size and switch from writes to reads if the number of write
requests fall below write low threshold.
This patch adds the tRRD parameter to the DRAM controller. With the
recent addition of the actAllowedAt member for each bank, this
addition is trivial.
This patch changes the tXAW constraint so that it is enforced per rank
rather than globally for all ranks in the channel. It also avoids
using the bank freeAt to enforce the activation limit, as doing so
also precludes performing any column or row command to the
DRAM. Instead the patch introduces a new variable actAllowedAt for the
banks and use this to track when a potential activation can occur.
This patch fixes the controller when a write threshold of 100% is
used. Earlier for 100% write threshold no data is written to memory
as writes never get triggered since this corner case is not
considered.
This patch changes the FCFS bit of FR-FCFS such that requests that
target the earliest available bank are picked first (as suggested in
the original work on FR-FCFS by Rixner et al). To accommodate this we
add functionality to identify a bank through a one-dimensional
identifier (bank id). The member names of the DRAMPacket are also
update to match the style guide.
This patch changes the time the controller is woken up to take the
next scheduling decisions. tRAS is now handled in estimateLatency and
doDRAMAccess and we do not need to worry about it at scheduling
time. The earliest we need to wake up is to do a pre-charge, row
access and column access before the bus becomes free for use.
This patch adds an explicit tRAS parameter to the DRAM controller
model. Previously tRAS was, rather conservatively, assumed to be tRCD
+ tCL + tRP. The default values for tRAS are chosen to match the
previous behaviour and will be updated later.
This patch changes the name the command-line options related to debug
output to all start with "debug" rather than being a mix of that and
"trace". It also makes it clear that the breakpoint time is specified
in ticks and not in cycles.
Thumb2 ARM kernels may access the TEEHBR via thumbee_notifier
in arch/arm/kernel/thumbee.c. The Linux kernel code just seems
to be saving and restoring the register. This patch adds support
for the TEEHBR cp14 register. Note, this may be a special case
when restoring from an image that was run on a system that
supports ThumbEE.
The VE motherboard provides a set of system control registers through which
various motherboard and coretile registers are accessed. Voltage regulators and
oscillator (DLL/PLL) config are examples. These registers must be impleted to
boot Linux 3.9+ kernels.
Newer linux kernels and distros exercise more functionality in the IDE device
than previously, exposing 2 races. The first race is the handling of aborted
DMA commands would immediately report the device is ready back to the kernel
and cause already in flight commands to assert the simulator when they returned
and discovered an inconsitent device state. The second race was due to the
Status register not being handled correctly, the interrupt status bit would get
stuck at 1 and the driver eventually views this as a bad state and logs the
condition to the terminal. This patch fixes these two conditions by making the
device handle aborted commands gracefully and properly handles clearing the
interrupt status bit in the Status register.
SimObjectVector objects did not provide the same interface to
the _parent attribute through get_parent() like a normal
SimObject. It also handled assigning a _parent incorrectly
if objects in a SimObjectVector were changed post-creation,
leading to errors later when the simulator tried to execute.
This patch fixes these two omissions.
SimLoopExitEvents weren't serialized by default. Some benchmarks
utilize a delayed m5 exit pseudo op call to terminate the simulation
and this event was lost when resuming from a checkpoint generated
after the pseudo op call. This patch adds the capability to serialize
the SimLoopExitEvents and enable serialization for m5_exit and m5_fail
pseudo ops by default. Does not affect other generic
SimLoopExitEvents.
Changes to make m5ops work under virtualization seemed to break them working
with non-virtualized systems and the recently added m5 fail command makes
the m5op binary not compile. For now remove the code for virtualization.
Fix a problem in the O3 CPU for instructions that are both
memory loads and memory barriers (e.g. load acquire) and
to uncacheable memory. This combination can confuse the
commit stage into commitng an instruction that hasn't
executed and got it's value yet. At the same time refactor
the code slightly to remove duplication between two of
the cases.
This patch adds missing initializations of the SenderMachine field of
out_msg's when thery are created in the L2 cache controller of the
MOESI_CMP_directory coherence protocol. When an out_msg is created and this
field is left uninitialized, it is set to the default value MachineType_NUM.
This causes a panic in the MachineType_to_string function when gem5 is
executed with the Ruby debug flag on and it tries to print the message.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
This patch fixes a problem where in Garnet, the enqueue time in the
VCallocator and the SWallocator which is of type Cycles was being stored
inside a variable with int type.
This lead to a known problem restoring checkpoints with garnet & the fixed
pipeline enabled. That value was really big and didn't fit in the variable
overflowing it, therefore some conditions on the VC allocation stage & the
SW allocation stage were not met and the packets didn't advance through the
network, leading to a deadlock panic right after the checkpoint was restored.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
The CoherentBus eventually got virtual methods for its interface. The
"virtuality" of the CoherentBus, however, comes already from the virtual
interface of the bus' ports. There is no need to add another layer of virtual
functions, here.
The underlying assumption that all PPIs must be edge-triggered is
strained when the architected timers and VGIC interfaces make
level-behaviour observable. For example, a virtual timer interrupt
'goes away' when the hypervisor is entered and the vtimer is disabled;
this requires a PPI to be de-activated.
The new method simply clears the interrupt pending state.
The ethernet address param tries to convert a hexadecimal
string using int() in python, which defaults to base 10,
need to specify base 16 in this case.
SimObjects are expected to only generate one port reference per
port belonging to them. There is a subtle bug with using "not"
here as a VectorPort is seen as not having a reference if it is
either None or empty as per Python docs sec 9.9 for Standard operators.
Intended behavior is to only check if we have not created the reference.
There is an option to enable/disable all framebuffer dumps, but the
last frame always gets dumped in the run folder with no other way to
disable it. These files can add up very quickly running many experiments.
This patch adds an option to disable them. The default behavior
remains unchanged.
