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.
This patch fixes an issue in the checker CPU register indexing. The
code will not even compile using LTO as deep inlining causes the used
index to be outside the array bounds.
The output from the switcheroo tests is voluminous and
(because it includes timestamps) highly sensitive to
minor changes, leading to extremely large updates to the
reference outputs. This patch addresses this problem
by suppressing output from the tests. An internal
parameter can be set to enable the output. Wiring that
up to a command-line flag (perhaps even the rudimantary
-v/-q options in m5/main.py) is left for future work.
This patch fixes a number of stats accounting issues in the DRAM
controller. Most importantly, it separates the system interface and
DRAM interface so that it is clearer what the actual DRAM bandwidth
(and consequently utilisation) is.
This patch unifies the request selection across read and write queues
for FR-FCFS scheduling policy. It also fixes the request selection
code to prioritize the row hits present in the request queues over the
selection based on earliest bank availability.
This patch adds a basic adaptive version of the open-page policy that
guides the decision to keep open or close by looking at the contents
of the controller queues. If no row hits are found, and bank conflicts
are present, then the row is closed by means of an auto
precharge. This is a well-known technique that should improve
performance in most use-cases.
This patch removes the untimed while loop in the write scheduling
mechanism and now schedule commands taking into account the minimum
timing constraint. It also introduces an optimization to track write
queue size and switch from writes to reads if the number of write
requests fall below write low threshold.
This patch adds the tRRD parameter to the DRAM controller. With the
recent addition of the actAllowedAt member for each bank, this
addition is trivial.
This patch changes the tXAW constraint so that it is enforced per rank
rather than globally for all ranks in the channel. It also avoids
using the bank freeAt to enforce the activation limit, as doing so
also precludes performing any column or row command to the
DRAM. Instead the patch introduces a new variable actAllowedAt for the
banks and use this to track when a potential activation can occur.
This patch fixes the controller when a write threshold of 100% is
used. Earlier for 100% write threshold no data is written to memory
as writes never get triggered since this corner case is not
considered.
This patch changes the FCFS bit of FR-FCFS such that requests that
target the earliest available bank are picked first (as suggested in
the original work on FR-FCFS by Rixner et al). To accommodate this we
add functionality to identify a bank through a one-dimensional
identifier (bank id). The member names of the DRAMPacket are also
update to match the style guide.
This patch changes the time the controller is woken up to take the
next scheduling decisions. tRAS is now handled in estimateLatency and
doDRAMAccess and we do not need to worry about it at scheduling
time. The earliest we need to wake up is to do a pre-charge, row
access and column access before the bus becomes free for use.
This patch adds an explicit tRAS parameter to the DRAM controller
model. Previously tRAS was, rather conservatively, assumed to be tRCD
+ tCL + tRP. The default values for tRAS are chosen to match the
previous behaviour and will be updated later.
This patch changes the name the command-line options related to debug
output to all start with "debug" rather than being a mix of that and
"trace". It also makes it clear that the breakpoint time is specified
in ticks and not in cycles.
