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23 commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Andreas Hansson
7433d77fcf mem: Add an option to perform clean writebacks from caches
This patch adds the necessary commands and cache functionality to
allow clean writebacks. This functionality is crucial, especially when
having exclusive (victim) caches. For example, if read-only L1
instruction caches are not sending clean writebacks, there will never
be any spills from the L1 to the L2. At the moment the cache model
defaults to not sending clean writebacks, and this should possibly be
re-evaluated.

The implementation of clean writebacks relies on a new packet command
WritebackClean, which acts much like a Writeback (renamed
WritebackDirty), and also much like a CleanEvict. On eviction of a
clean block the cache either sends a clean evict, or a clean
writeback, and if any copies are still cached upstream the clean
evict/writeback is dropped. Similarly, if a clean evict/writeback
reaches a cache where there are outstanding MSHRs for the block, the
packet is dropped. In the typical case though, the clean writeback
allocates a block in the downstream cache, and marks it writable if
the evicted block was writable.

The patch changes the O3_ARM_v7a L1 cache configuration and the
default L1 caches in config/common/Caches.py
2015-11-06 03:26:43 -05:00
Andreas Hansson
654266f39c mem: Add cache clusivity
This patch adds a parameter to control the cache clusivity, that is if
the cache is mostly inclusive or exclusive. At the moment there is no
intention to support strict policies, and thus the options are: 1)
mostly inclusive, or 2) mostly exclusive.

The choice of policy guides the behaviuor on a cache fill, and a new
helper function, allocOnFill, is created to encapsulate the decision
making process. For the timing mode, the decision is annotated on the
MSHR on sending out the downstream packet, and in atomic we directly
pass the decision to handleFill. We (ab)use the tempBlock in cases
where we are not allocating on fill, leaving the rest of the cache
unaffected. Simple and effective.

This patch also makes it more explicit that multiple caches are
allowed to consider a block writable (this is the case
also before this patch). That is, for a mostly inclusive cache,
multiple caches upstream may also consider the block exclusive. The
caches considering the block writable/exclusive all appear along the
same path to memory, and from a coherency protocol point of view it
works due to the fact that we always snoop upwards in zero time before
querying any downstream cache.

Note that this patch does not introduce clean writebacks. Thus, for
clean lines we are essentially removing a cache level if it is made
mostly exclusive. For example, lines from the read-only L1 instruction
cache or table-walker cache are always clean, and simply get dropped
rather than being passed to the L2. If the L2 is mostly exclusive and
does not allocate on fill it will thus never hold the line. A follow
on patch adds the clean writebacks.

The patch changes the L2 of the O3_ARM_v7a CPU configuration to be
mostly exclusive (and stats are affected accordingly).
2015-11-06 03:26:41 -05:00
Andreas Hansson
ddfa96cf45 mem: Add explicit Cache subclass and make BaseCache abstract
Open up for other subclasses to BaseCache and transition to using the
explicit Cache subclass.

--HG--
rename : src/mem/cache/BaseCache.py => src/mem/cache/Cache.py
2015-08-21 07:03:23 -04:00
Andreas Hansson
b93c912013 mem: Remove redundant is_top_level cache parameter
This patch takes the final step in removing the is_top_level parameter
from the cache. With the recent changes to read requests and write
invalidations, the parameter is no longer needed, and consequently
removed.

This also means that asymmetric cache hierarchies are now fully
supported (and we are actually using them already with L1 caches, but
no table-walker caches, connected to a shared L2).
2015-07-03 10:14:43 -04:00
Andreas Hansson
893533a126 mem: Allow read-only caches and check compliance
This patch adds a parameter to the BaseCache to enable a read-only
cache, for example for the instruction cache, or table-walker cache
(not for x86). A number of checks are put in place in the code to
ensure a read-only cache does not end up with dirty data.

A follow-on patch adds suitable read requests to allow a read-only
cache to explicitly ask for clean data.
2015-07-03 10:14:39 -04:00
Andreas Hansson
554ddc7c07 arch, cpu: Do not forward snoops to table walker
This patch simplifies the overall CPU by changing the TLB caches such
that they do not forward snoops to the table walker port(s). Note that
only ARM and X86 are affected.

There is no reason for the ports to snoop as they do not actually take
any action, and from a performance point of view we are better of not
snooping more than we have to.

Should it at a later point be required to snoop for a particular TLB
design it is easy enough to add it back.
2015-05-05 03:22:27 -04:00
Nilay Vaish
4333549575 cpu: o3: replace issueLatency with bool pipelined
Currently, each op class has a parameter issueLat that denotes the cycles after
which another op of the same class can be issued.  As of now, this latency can
either be one cycle (fully pipelined) or same as execution latency of the op
(not at all pipelined).  The fact that issueLat is a parameter of type Cycles
makes one believe that it can be set to any value.  To avoid the confusion, the
parameter is being renamed as 'pipelined' with type boolean.  If set to true,
the op would execute in a fully pipelined fashion. Otherwise, it would execute
in an unpipelined fashion.
2015-04-29 22:35:22 -05:00
Dibakar Gope
34ad1123ee cpu: re-organizes the branch predictor structure.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
2015-04-13 17:33:57 -05:00
Andreas Hansson
aeffde5ed5 arm, configs: Do not forward snoops from I cache
This fix simply tells the I cache to not forward snoops to the fetch
unit (since there is really no reason to do so).
2015-03-27 04:56:10 -04:00
Mitch Hayenga
976f27487b cpu: Change writeback modeling for outstanding instructions
As highlighed on the mailing list gem5's writeback modeling can impact
performance.  This patch removes the limitation on maximum outstanding issued
instructions, however the number that can writeback in a single cycle is still
respected in instToCommit().
2014-09-03 07:42:33 -04:00
Anthony Gutierrez
0ac4624595 arm: make the PseudoLRU tags the default for the O3_ARM_v7aL2
the Cortex-A15 has a random replacement policy for its L2 cache. see the
Cortex-A15 Technical Reference Manual 1.7 About the L2 memory system. this
patch makes the PseudoLRU tags the default for the ARM O3 CPU's L2 cache.
2014-07-28 12:22:00 -04:00
Anthony Gutierrez
db267da822 arm: make the bi-mode predictor the default for O3_ARM_v7a_BP
the branch predictor used in the Cortex-A15 is a bi-mode style predictor,
see:

http://arm.com/files/pdf/at-exploring_the_design_of_the_cortex-a15.pdf
and
http://nvidia.com/docs/IO/116757/NVIDIA_Quad_a15_whitepaper_FINALv2.pdf

this patch makes the bi-mode predictor the default for the ARM O3 CPU.
2014-06-30 13:50:01 -04:00
ARM gem5 Developers
612f8f074f arm: Add support for ARMv8 (AArch64 & AArch32)
Note: AArch64 and AArch32 interworking is not supported. If you use an AArch64
kernel you are restricted to AArch64 user-mode binaries. This will be addressed
in a later patch.

Note: Virtualization is only supported in AArch32 mode. This will also be fixed
in a later patch.

Contributors:
Giacomo Gabrielli    (TrustZone, LPAE, system-level AArch64, AArch64 NEON, validation)
Thomas Grocutt       (AArch32 Virtualization, AArch64 FP, validation)
Mbou Eyole           (AArch64 NEON, validation)
Ali Saidi            (AArch64 Linux support, code integration, validation)
Edmund Grimley-Evans (AArch64 FP)
William Wang         (AArch64 Linux support)
Rene De Jong         (AArch64 Linux support, performance opt.)
Matt Horsnell        (AArch64 MP, validation)
Matt Evans           (device models, code integration, validation)
Chris Adeniyi-Jones  (AArch64 syscall-emulation)
Prakash Ramrakhyani  (validation)
Dam Sunwoo           (validation)
Chander Sudanthi     (validation)
Stephan Diestelhorst (validation)
Andreas Hansson      (code integration, performance opt.)
Eric Van Hensbergen  (performance opt.)
Gabe Black
2014-01-24 15:29:34 -06:00
Anthony Gutierrez
8a53da22c2 cpu: allow the fetch buffer to be smaller than a cache line
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.
2013-11-15 13:21:15 -05:00
Andreas Hansson
c20105c2ff config: Update script to set cache line size on system
This patch changes the config scripts such that they do not set the
cache line size per cache instance, but rather for the system as a
whole.
2013-07-18 08:31:19 -04:00
Anthony Gutierrez
d3c33d91b6 cpu: remove local/globalHistoryBits params from branch pred
having separate params for the local/globalHistoryBits and the
local/globalPredictorSize can lead to inconsistencies if they
are not carefully set. this patch dervies the number of bits
necessary to index into the local/global predictors based on
their size.

the value of the localHistoryTableSize for the ARM O3 CPU has been
increased to 1024 from 64, which is more accurate for an A15 based
on some correlation against A15 hardware.
2013-05-14 18:39:47 -04:00
Nilay Vaish ext:(%2C%20Timothy%20Jones%20%3Ctimothy.jones%40cl.cam.ac.uk%3E)
dbeabedaf0 branch predictor: move out of o3 and inorder cpus
This patch moves the branch predictor files in the o3 and inorder directories
to src/cpu/pred. This allows sharing the branch predictor across different
cpu models.

This patch was originally posted by Timothy Jones in July 2010
but never made it to the repository.

--HG--
rename : src/cpu/o3/bpred_unit.cc => src/cpu/pred/bpred_unit.cc
rename : src/cpu/o3/bpred_unit.hh => src/cpu/pred/bpred_unit.hh
rename : src/cpu/o3/bpred_unit_impl.hh => src/cpu/pred/bpred_unit_impl.hh
rename : src/cpu/o3/sat_counter.hh => src/cpu/pred/sat_counter.hh
2013-01-24 12:28:51 -06:00
Andreas Sandberg
2cfe62adc4 cpu: Rename defer_registration->switched_out
The defer_registration parameter is used to prevent a CPU from
initializing at startup, leaving it in the "switched out" mode. The
name of this parameter (and the help string) is confusing. This patch
renames it to switched_out, which should be more descriptive.
2013-01-07 13:05:45 -05:00
Erik Tomusk
3dc7e4f496 TournamentBP: Fix some bugs with table sizes and counters
globalHistoryBits, globalPredictorSize, and choicePredictorSize are decoupled.
globalHistoryBits controls how much history is kept, global and choice
predictor sizes control how much of that history is used when accessing
predictor tables. This way, global and choice predictors can actually be
different sizes, and it is no longer possible to walk off the predictor arrays
and cause a seg fault.

There are now individual thresholds for choice, global, and local saturating
counters, so that taken/not taken decisions are correct even when the
predictors' counters' sizes are different.

The interface for localPredictorSize has been removed from TournamentBP because
the value can be calculated from localHistoryBits.

Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
2012-12-06 09:31:06 -06:00
Andreas Hansson
88554790c3 Mem: Use cycles to express cache-related latencies
This patch changes the cache-related latencies from an absolute time
expressed in Ticks, to a number of cycles that can be scaled with the
clock period of the caches. Ultimately this patch serves to enable
future work that involves dynamic frequency scaling. As an immediate
benefit it also makes it more convenient to specify cache performance
without implicitly assuming a specific CPU core operating frequency.

The stat blocked_cycles that actually counter in ticks is now updated
to count in cycles.

As the timing is now rounded to the clock edges of the cache, there
are some regressions that change. Plenty of them have very minor
changes, whereas some regressions with a short run-time are perturbed
quite significantly. A follow-on patch updates all the statistics for
the regressions.
2012-10-15 08:10:54 -04:00
Mrinmoy Ghosh
6fc0094337 Cache: add a response latency to the caches
In the current caches the hit latency is paid twice on a miss. This patch lets
a configurable response latency be set of the cache for the backward path.
2012-09-25 11:49:41 -05:00
Mrinmoy Ghosh
7e104a1af2 prefetcher: Make prefetcher a sim object instead of it being a parameter on cache 2012-02-12 16:07:38 -06:00
Ronald Dreslinski
38ee552798 configs: actually add ARMv7a-like cpu/cache file 2012-01-26 16:44:43 -05:00