The disk image to use was always being forced to a particular value. This
change changes what disk image is selected as the default based on the
architecture being built. In the future, a more sophisticated system might be
used that selected a path based on certain rules instead of relying on one off
file names.
M5 skips over any simulated time where it doesn't have any work to do. When
the simulation is active, the time skipped is short and the work done at any
point in time is relatively substantial. If the time between events is long
and/or the work to do at each event is small, it's possible for simulated time
to pass faster than real time. When running a benchmark that can be good
because it means the simulation will finish sooner in real time. When
interacting with the real world through, for instance, a serial terminal or
bridge to a real network, this can be a problem. Human or network response time
could be greatly exagerated from the perspective of the simulation and make
simulated events happen "too soon" from an external perspective.
This change adds the capability to force the simulation to run no faster than
real time. It does so by scheduling a periodic event that checks to see if
its simulated period is shorter than its real period. If it is, it stalls the
simulation until they're equal. This is called time syncing.
A future change could add pseudo instructions which turn time syncing on and
off from within the simulation. That would allow time syncing to be used for
the interactive parts of a session but then turned off when running a
benchmark using the m5 utility program inside a script. Time syncing would
probably not happen anyway while running a benchmark because there would be
plenty of work for M5 to do, but the event overhead could be avoided.
This patch adds an option to the script Ruby.py for setting the parameter
m_random_seed used for randomizing delays in the memory system. The option
can be specified as "--random_seed <seed value>".
Most of the messages in the config scripts that report a time value already
print "@ tick" followed by the current tick value, but a few were printing
"@ cycle". Since this is a distinction that's frequently confusing to new
users, this changes those message to the more accurate and consistent "@ tick".
Patch allows each individual message buffer to have different recycle latencies
and allows the overall recycle latency to be specified at the cmd line. The
patch also adds profiling info to make sure no one processor's requests are
recycled too much.
This patch allows one to disable migratory sharing for those cache blocks that
are accessed by atomic requests. While the implementations are different
between the token and hammer protocols, the motivation is the same. For
Alpha, LLSC semantics expect that normal loads do not unlock cache blocks that
have been locked by LL accesses. Therefore, locked blocks should not transfer
write permissions when responding to these load requests. Instead, only they
only transfer read permissions so that the subsequent SC access can possibly
succeed.
The previous slower ruby latencies created a mismatch between the faster M5
cpu models and the much slower ruby memory system. Specifically smp
interrupts were much slower and infrequent, as well as cpus moving in and out
of spin locks. The result was many cpus were idle for large periods of time.
These changes fix the latency mismatch.
This patch adds DMA testing to the Memtester and is inherits many changes from
Polina's old tester_dma_extension patch. Since Ruby does not work in atomic
mode, the atomic mode options are removed.
This patch attaches ruby objects to the system before the topology is
created so that their simobject names read their meaningful variable
names instead of their topology name.
The separate restoreCheckpoint() call is gone; just pass
the checkpoint dir as an optional arg to instantiate().
This change is a precursor to some more extensive
reworking of the startup code.
Enforce that the Python Root SimObject is instantiated only
once. The C++ Root object already panics if more than one is
created. This change avoids the need to track what the root
object is, since it's available from Root.getInstance() (if it
exists). It's now redundant to have the user pass the root
object to functions like instantiate(), checkpoint(), and
restoreCheckpoint(), so that arg is gone. Users who use
configs/common/Simulate.py should not notice.
The patch creates a specific mesh network where directories are at the corners.
The patch is a good example of how to create an arbitrary network, similar to
the old file specified network, while leveraging scripts and loops when
possible.
Most of these frontend configurations share cache configuration code, pull it out so that
changes to caches don't have to require changing multiple config files.
