The probe patch is motivated by the desire to move analytical and trace code
away from functional code. This is achieved by the probe interface which is
essentially a glorified observer model.
What this means to users:
* add a probe point and a "notify" call at the source of an "event"
* add an isolated module, that is being used to carry out *your* analysis (e.g. generate a trace)
* register that module as a probe listener
Note: an example is given for reference in src/cpu/o3/simple_trace.[hh|cc] and src/cpu/SimpleTrace.py
What is happening under the hood:
* every SimObject maintains has a ProbeManager.
* during initialization (src/python/m5/simulate.py) first regProbePoints and
the regProbeListeners is called on each SimObject. this hooks up the probe
point notify calls with the listeners.
FAQs:
Why did you develop probe points:
* to remove trace, stats gathering, analytical code out of the functional code.
* the belief that probes could be generically useful.
What is a probe point:
* a probe point is used to notify upon a given event (e.g. cpu commits an instruction)
What is a probe listener:
* a class that handles whatever the user wishes to do when they are notified
about an event.
What can be passed on notify:
* probe points are templates, and so the user can generate probes that pass any
type of argument (by const reference) to a listener.
What relationships can be generated (1:1, 1:N, N:M etc):
* there isn't a restriction. You can hook probe points and listeners up in a
1:1, 1:N, N:M relationship. They become useful when a number of modules
listen to the same probe points. The idea being that you can add a small
number of probes into the source code and develop a larger number of useful
analysis modules that use information passed by the probes.
Can you give examples:
* adding a probe point to the cpu's commit method allows you to build a trace
module (outputting assembler), you could re-use this to gather instruction
distribution (arithmetic, load/store, conditional, control flow) stats.
Why is the probe interface currently restricted to passing a const reference:
* the desire, initially at least, is to allow an interface to observe
functionality, but not to change functionality.
* of course this can be subverted by const-casting.
What is the performance impact of adding probes:
* when nothing is actively listening to the probes they should have a
relatively minor impact. Profiling has suggested even with a large number of
probes (60) the impact of them (when not active) is very minimal (<1%).
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.
Currently the commit stage keeps a local copy of the interrupt object.
Since the interrupt is usually handled several cycles after the commit
stage becomes aware of it, it is possible that the local copy of the
interrupt object may not be the interrupt that is actually handled.
It is possible that another interrupt occurred in the
interval between interrupt detection and interrupt handling.
This patch creates a copy of the interrupt just before the interrupt
is handled. The local copy is ignored.
Fixes the tick used from rename:
- previously this gathered the tick on leaving rename which was always 1 less
than the dispatch. This conflated the decode ticks when back pressure built
in the pipeline.
- now picks up tick on entry.
Added --store_completions flag:
- will additionally display the store completion tail in the viewer.
- this highlights periods when large numbers of stores are outstanding (>16 LSQ
blocking)
Allows selection by tick range (previously this caused an infinite loop)
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
Enables the CheckerCPU to be selected at runtime with the --checker option
from the configs/example/fs.py and configs/example/se.py configuration
files. Also merges with the SE/FS changes.
1. Updates the Branch Predictor correctly to the state
just after a mispredicted branch, if a squash occurs.
2. If a BTB does not find an entry, the branch is predicted not taken.
The global history is modified to correctly reflect this prediction.
3. Local history is now updated at the fetch stage instead of
execute stage.
4. In the Update stage of the branch predictor the local predictors are
now correctly updated according to the state of local history during
fetch stage.
This patch also improves performance by as much as 17% on some benchmarks
The condition for handling interrupts is to check whether or not the cpu's
instruction list is empty. As observed, this can lead to cases in which even
though the instruction list is empty, interrupts are handled when they should
not be. The condition is being strengthened so that interrupts get handled only
when the last committed microop did not had IsDelayedCommit set.
This patch adds a function to the ROB that will get the squashing instruction
from the ROB's list of instructions. This squashing instruction is used for
figuring out the macroop from which the fetch stage should fetch the microops.
Further, a check has been added that if the instructions are to be fetched
from the cache maintained by the fetch stage, then the data in the cache should
be valid and the PC of the thread being fetched from is same as the address of
the cache block.
Brings the CheckerCPU back to life to allow FS and SE checking of the
O3CPU. These changes have only been tested with the ARM ISA. Other
ISAs potentially require modification.
Initialize flags via the Event constructor instead of calling
setFlags() in the body of the derived class's constructor. I
forget exactly why, but this made life easier when implementing
multi-queue support.
Also rename Event::getFlags() to isFlagSet() to better match
common usage, and get rid of some unused Event methods.
SEV instructions were originally implemented to cause asynchronous squashes
via the generateTCSquash() function in the O3 pipeline when updating the
SEV_MAILBOX miscReg. This caused race conditions between CPUs in an MP system
that would lead to a pipeline either going inactive indefinitely or not being
able to commit squashed instructions. Fixed SEV instructions to behave like
interrupts and cause synchronous sqaushes inside the pipeline, eliminating
the race conditions. Also fixed up the semantics of the WFE instruction to
behave as documented in the ARMv7 ISA description to not sleep if SEV_MAILBOX=1
or unmasked interrupts are pending.
Before this change, the commit stage would wait until the ROB and store queue
were empty before recognizing an interrupt. The fetch stage would stop
generating instructions at an appropriate point, so commit would then wait
until a valid time to interrupt the instruction stream. Instructions might be
in flight after fetch but not the in the ROB or store queue (in rename, for
instance), so this change makes commit wait until all in flight instructions
are finished.
Implemented a pipeline activity viewer as a python script (util/o3-pipeview.py)
and modified O3 code base to support an extra trace flag (O3PipeView) for
generating traces to be used as inputs by the tool.
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
Without this change 0 is always used for the youngest sequence number if
a squash occured and the ROB was empty (E.g. an instruction is marked
serializeAfter or a fetch stall prevents other instructions from issuing).
Using 0 there is a race to rename where an instruction that committed the
same cycle as the squashing instruction can have it's renamed state undone
by the squash using sequence number 0.
The squash inside the fetch unit should not attempt to remove them from the
branch predictor as non-control instructions are not pushed into the predictor.
When this condition occurs the cpu should restart the fetch stage to fetch from
the original execution path. Fault handling in the commit stage is cleaned up a
little bit so the control flow is simplier. Finally, if an instruction is being
used to carry a fault it isn't executed, so the fault propagates appropriately.
These files really aren't general enough to belong in src/base.
This patch doesn't reorder include lines, leaving them unsorted
in many cases, but Nate's magic script will fix that up shortly.
--HG--
rename : src/base/sched_list.hh => src/cpu/sched_list.hh
rename : src/base/timebuf.hh => src/cpu/timebuf.hh
For SPARC ASIs are added to the ExtMachInst. If the ASI is changed simply
marking the instruction as Serializing isn't enough beacuse that only
stops rename. This provides a mechanism to squash all the instructions
and refetch them
ARM instructions updating cumulative flags (ARM FP exceptions and saturation
flags) are not serialized.
Added aliases for ARM FP exceptions and saturation flags in FPSCR. Removed
write accesses to the FP condition codes for most ARM VFP instructions: only
VCMP and VCMPE instructions update the FP condition codes. Removed a potential
cause of seg. faults in the O3 model for NEON memory macro-ops (ARM).
