This patch add support for generating wake-up events in the CPU when an address
that is currently in the exclusive state is hit by a snoop. This mechanism is required
for ARMv8 multi-processor support.
Previously we were casting the result type to the the memory type which
is incorrect for things like dual-memory operations which still return a
single result.
Adds very basic statistics on the number of tag and data accesses within the
cache, which is important for power modelling. For the tags, simply count
the associativity of the cache each time. For the data, this depends on
whether tags and data are accessed sequentially, which is given by a new
parameter. In the parallel case, all data blocks are accessed each time, but
with sequential accesses, a single data block is accessed only on a hit.
This patch enables tracking of cache occupancy per thread along with
ages (in buckets) per cache blocks. Cache occupancy stats are
recalculated on each stat dump.
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%).
This patch adds observability to the clock period of the clock domains
by including it as a stat.
As a result of adding this, the regressions will be updated in a
separate patch.
Add some values and methods to the request object to track the translation
and access latency for a request and which level of the cache hierarchy responded
to the request.
This patch makes the Clock a TickParamValue just like
Latency/Frequency. There is no longer any need to distinguish it
(originally needed to support multiplication).
This patch fixes a memory leak in the table walker, by ensuring that
the sender state is deleted again if the request packet cannot be
successfully sent.
This patch relaxes the check performed when squashing non-speculative
instructions, as it caused problems with loads that were marked ready,
and then stalled on a blocked cache. The assertion is now allowing
memory references to be non-faulting.
This patch removes an assertion in the simpoint profiling code that
asserts that a previously-seen basic block has the exact same number
of instructions executed as before. This can be false if the basic
block generates aborts or takes interrupts at different locations
within the basic block. The basic block profiling are not affected
significantly as these events are rare in general.
This patch adds a function to the HistStor class for adding two histograms.
This functionality is required for Ruby. It also adds support for printing
histograms in a single line.
The first two levels (L0, L1) are private to the core, the third level (L2)is
possibly shared. The protocol supports clustered designs. For example, one
can have two sets of two cores. Each core has an L0 and L1 cache. There are
two L2 controllers where each set accesses only one of the L2 controllers.
A cluster over here means a set of controllers that can be accessed only by a
certain set of cores. For example, consider a two level hierarchy. Assume
there are 4 L1 controllers (private) and 2 L2 controllers. We can have two
different hierarchies here:
a. the address space is partitioned between the two L2 controllers. Each L1
controller accesses both the L2 controllers. In this case, each L1 controller
is a cluster initself.
b. both the L2 controllers can cache any address. An L1 controller has access
to only one of the L2 controllers. In this case, each L2 controller
along with the L1 controllers that access it, form a cluster.
This patch allows for each controller to have a cluster ID, which is 0 by
default. By setting the cluster ID properly, one can instantiate hierarchies
with clusters. Note that the coherence protocol might have to be changed as
well.
For some reason, the default x86 kernel is specified in
tests/configs/x86_generic.py and not in configs/common/FSConfig.py,
where the kernels for all the other ISAs are. This means that
running configs/example/fs.py for x86 fails because no kernel
is specified. Moving the specification over fixes this problem.
There is another problem that this uncovers, which is that going
past the init stage (i.e., past where the regression test stops)
fails because the fsck test on the disk device fails, but that's
a separate issue.
If you successfully export a C++ SimObject method, but try to
invoke it from Python before the C++ object is created, you
get a confusing error that says the attribute does not exist,
making you question whether you successfully exported the
method at all. In reality, your only problem is that you're
calling the method too soon. This patch enhances the error
message to give you a better clue.
Updating the SimObject topology of a cloned hierarchy is a little
dangerous, in that cloning is a "deep copy" and the clone does not
inherit SimObject updates the same way it would inherit scalar
variable assignments.
However, because of various SimObject-valued proxy parameters,
like 'memories', 'clk_domain', and 'system', it turns out that
there are a number of implicit topology changes that happen at
instantiation, which means that these changes are impossible to
avoid. So in order to make cloning systems useful, this error
has to go. Changing it to a warning produces a lot of noise,
so it seems best just to delete it.
This patch provides support for DFS by having ClockedObjects register
themselves with their clock domain at construction time in a member list.
Using this list, a clock domain can update each member's tick to the
curTick() before modifying the clock period.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
In mips architecture, floating point convert instructions use the
FloatConvertOp format defined in src/arch/mips/isa/formats/fp.isa. The type
of the operands in the ISA description file (_sw for signed word, or _sf for
signed float, etc.) is used to create a type for the operand in C++. Then the
operand is converted using the fpConvert() function in src/arch/mips/utility.cc.
If we are converting from a word to a float, and we want to convert 0xffffffff,
we expect -1 to be passed into fpConvert(). Instead, we see MAX_INT passed in.
Then fpConvert() converts _val_ to MAX_INT in single-precision floating point,
and we get the wrong value.
To fix it, the signs of the convert operands are being changed from unsigned to
signed in the MIPS ISA description.
Then, the FloatConvertOp format is being changed to insert a int32_t into the
C++ code instead of a uint32_t.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
This patch fixes couple of bugs in the L2 controller of the mesi cmp
directory protocol.
1. The state MT_I was transitioning to NP on receiving a clean writeback
from the L1 controller. This patch makes it inform the directory controller
about the writeback.
2. The L2 controller was sending the dirty bit to the L1 controller and the
L2 controller used writeback from the L1 controller to update the dirty bit
unconditionally. Now, the L1 controller always assumes that the incoming
data is clean. The L2 controller updates the dirty bit only when the L1
controller writes to the block.
3. Certain unused functions and events are being removed.
This patch replaces max_in_port_rank with the number of inports. The use of
max_in_port_rank was causing spurious re-builds and incorrect initialization
of variables in ruby related regression tests. This was due to the variable
value being used across threads while compiling when it was not meant to be.
Since the number of inports is state machine specific value, this problem
should get solved.
The directory controller should not have the sharer field since there is
only one level 2 cache. Anyway the field was not in use. The owner field
was being used to track the l2 cache version (in case of distributed l2) that
has the cache block under consideration. The information is not required
since the version of the level 2 cache can be obtained from a subset of the
address bits.
Currently statistics are reset after the initial / checkpoint state
has been loaded. But ruby does some checkpoint processing in its
startup() function. So the stats need to be reset after the startup()
function has been called. This patch moves the class to stats.reset()
to achieve this change in functionality.
The checkpoint aggregation script had become outdated due to numerous changes
to checkpoints over the past couple of years. This updates the script. It
now supports aggregation for x86 architecture instead of alpha. Also a couple
of new options have been added that specify the size of the memory file to be
created and whether or not the memory file should be compressed.
There is a race between enabling asynchronous IO for a file descriptor
and IO events happening on that descriptor. A SIGIO won't normally be
delivered if an event is pending when asynchronous IO is
enabled. Instead, the signal will be raised the next time there is an
event on the FD. This changeset simulates a SIGIO by setting the
async_io flag when setting up asynchronous IO for an FD. This causes
the main event loop to poll all file descriptors to check for pending
IO. As a consequence of this, the old SIGALRM hack should no longer be
needed and is therefore removed.
The PollEvent class dynamically installs a SIGIO and SIGALRM handler
when a file handler is registered. Most signal handlers currently get
registered in the initSignals() function. This changeset moves the
SIGIO/SIGALRM handlers to initSignals() to live with the other signal
handlers. The original code installs SIGIO and SIGALRM with the
SA_RESTART option to prevent syscalls from returning EINTR. This
changeset consistently uses this flag for all signal handlers to
ensure that other signals that trigger asynchronous behavior (e.g.,
statistics dumping) do not cause undesirable EINTR returns.
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.
