This patch changes MessageBuffer and TimerTable, two structures used for
buffering messages by components in ruby. These structures would no longer
maintain pointers to clock objects. Functions in these structures have been
changed to take as input current time in Tick. Similarly, these structures
will not operate on Cycle valued latencies for different operations. The
corresponding functions would need to be provided with these latencies by
components invoking the relevant functions. These latencies should also be
in Ticks.
I felt the need for these changes while trying to speed up ruby. The ultimate
aim is to eliminate Consumer class and replace it with an EventManager object in
the MessageBuffer and TimerTable classes. This object would be used for
scheduling events. The event itself would contain information on the object and
function to be invoked.
In hindsight, it seems I should have done this while I was moving away from use
of a single global clock in the memory system. That change led to introduction
of clock objects that replaced the global clock object. It never crossed my
mind that having clock object pointers is not a good design. And now I really
don't like the fact that we have separate consumer, receiver and sender
pointers in message buffers.
This patch eliminates the type Address defined by the ruby memory system.
This memory system would now use the type Addr that is in use by the
rest of the system.
Expose MessageBuffers from SLICC controllers as SimObjects that can be
manipulated in Python. This patch has numerous benefits:
1) First and foremost, it exposes MessageBuffers as SimObjects that can be
manipulated in Python code. This allows parameters to be set and checked in
Python code to avoid obfuscating parameters within protocol files. Further, now
as SimObjects, MessageBuffer parameters are printed to config output files as a
way to track parameters across simulations (e.g. buffer sizes)
2) Cleans up special-case code for responseFromMemory buffers, and aligns their
instantiation and use with mandatoryQueue buffers. These two special buffers
are the only MessageBuffers that are exposed to components outside of SLICC
controllers, and they're both slave ends of these buffers. They should be
exposed outside of SLICC in the same way, and this patch does it.
3) Distinguishes buffer-specific parameters from buffer-to-network parameters.
Specifically, buffer size, randomization, ordering, recycle latency, and ports
are all specific to a MessageBuffer, while the virtual network ID and type are
intrinsics of how the buffer is connected to network ports. The former are
specified in the Python object, while the latter are specified in the
controller *.sm files. Unlike buffer-specific parameters, which may need to
change depending on the simulated system structure, buffer-to-network
parameters can be specified statically for most or all different simulated
systems.
This structure's only purpose was to provide a comparison function for
ordering messages in the MessageBuffer. The comparison function is now
being moved to the Message class itself. So we no longer require this
structure.
