A step towards removing RubyMemoryControl and shift users to
DRAMCtrl. The latter is faster, more representative, very versatile,
and is integrated with power models.
This patch is the final in the series. The whole series and this patch in
particular were written with the aim of interfacing ruby's directory controller
with the memory controller in the classic memory system. This is being done
since ruby's memory controller has not being kept up to date with the changes
going on in DRAMs. Classic's memory controller is more up to date and
supports multiple different types of DRAM. This also brings classic and
ruby ever more close. The patch also changes ruby's memory controller to
expose the same interface.
This patch removes the data block present in the directory entry structure
of each protocol in gem5's mainline. Firstly, this is required for moving
towards common set of memory controllers for classic and ruby memory systems.
Secondly, the data block was being misused in several places. It was being
used for having free access to the physical memory instead of calling on the
memory controller.
From now on, the directory controller will not have a direct visibility into
the physical memory. The Memory Vector object now resides in the
Memory Controller class. This also means that some significant changes are
being made to the functional accesses in ruby.
This patch tidies up random number generation to ensure that it is
done consistently throughout the code base. In essence this involves a
clean-up of Ruby, and some code simplifications in the traffic
generator.
As part of this patch a bunch of skewed distributions (off-by-one etc)
have been fixed.
Note that a single global random number generator is used, and that
the object instantiation order will impact the behaviour (the sequence
of numbers will be unaffected, but if module A calles random before
module B then they would obviously see a different outcome). The
dependency on the instantiation order is true in any case due to the
execution-model of gem5, so we leave it as is. Also note that the
global ranom generator is not thread safe at this point.
Regressions using the memtest, TrafficGen or any Ruby tester are
affected and will be updated accordingly.