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.
The eventual aim of this change is to pass RubySystem pointers through to
objects generated from the SLICC protocol code.
Because some of these objects need to dereference their RubySystem pointers,
they need access to the System.hh header file.
In src/mem/ruby/SConscript, the MakeInclude function creates single-line header
files in the build directory that do nothing except include the corresponding
header file from the source tree.
However, SLICC also generates a list of header files from its symbol table, and
writes it to mem/protocol/Types.hh in the build directory. This code assumes
that the header file name is the same as the class name.
The end result of this is the many of the generated slicc files try to include
RubySystem.hh, when the file they really need is System.hh. The path of least
resistence is just to rename System.hh to RubySystem.hh.
--HG--
rename : src/mem/ruby/system/System.cc => src/mem/ruby/system/RubySystem.cc
rename : src/mem/ruby/system/System.hh => src/mem/ruby/system/RubySystem.hh
Refactored the code in operateVnet(), moved partly to a new function
operateMessageBuffer(). This is required since a later patch moves to having a
wakeup event per MessageBuffer instead of one event for the entire Switch.
There are two reasons for doing so:
a. provide a source of clock to PerfectSwitch. A follow on patch removes sender
and receiver pointers from MessageBuffer means that the object owning the
buffer should have some way of providing timing info.
b. schedule events. A follow on patch removes the consumer class. So the
PerfectSwitch needs some EventManager object to schedule events on its own.
This member indicates whether or not a particular virtual network is in use.
Instead of having a default big value for the number of virtual networks and
then checking whether a virtual network is in use, the next patch removes the
default value and the protocol configuration file would now specify the
number of virtual networks it requires.
Additionally, the patch also refactors some of the code used for computing the
virtual channel next in the round robin order.
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 patch changes the router pipeline stages from 4 to 2. The
canonical 4-stage router is conservative while a lower-latency router
with look ahead routing and speculative allocation is well acknowledged.
Sets m_stage.second to the second parameter of the function.
Then, for every place where advance_stage is called, adds
a cycle to the argument being passed.
It was previously possible for a stalled message to be reordered after an
incomming message. This patch ensures that any stalled message stays in its
original request order.
This is another step in the process of removing global variables
from Ruby to enable multiple RubySystem instances in a single simulation.
The list of abstract controllers is per-RubySystem and should be
represented that way, rather than as a global.
Since this is the last remaining Ruby global variable, the
src/mem/ruby/Common/Global.* files are also removed.
This is another step in the process of removing global variables
from Ruby to enable multiple RubySystem instances in a single simulation.
With possibly multiple RubySystem objects, we can no longer use a global
variable to find "the" RubySystem object. Instead, each Ruby component
has to carry a pointer to the RubySystem object to which it belongs.
This patch begins the process of removing global variables from the Ruby
source with the goal of eventually allowing users to create multiple Ruby
instances in a single simulation. Currently, users cannot do so because
several global variables and static members are referenced by the RubySystem
object in a way that assumes that there will only ever be a single RubySystem.
These need to be replaced with per-RubySystem equivalents.
This specific patch replaces the global var g_ruby_start, which is used
to calculate throughput statistics for Throttles in simple networks and
links in Garnet networks, with a RubySystem instance var m_start_cycle.
This patch drops the NetworkMessage class. The relevant data members and functions
have been moved to the Message class, which was the parent of NetworkMessage.
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.
The processes of warming up and cooling down Ruby caches are simulation-wide
processes, not just RubySystem instance-specific processes. Thus, the warm-up
and cool-down variables should be globally visible to any Ruby components
participating in either process. Make these variables static members and track
the warm-up and cool-down processes as appropriate.
This patch also has two side benefits:
1) It removes references to the RubySystem g_system_ptr, which are problematic
for allowing multiple RubySystem instances in a single simulation. Warmup and
cooldown variables being static (global) reduces the need for instance-specific
dereferences through the RubySystem.
2) From the AbstractController, it removes local RubySystem pointers, which are
used inconsistently with other uses of the RubySystem: 11 other uses reference
the RubySystem with the g_system_ptr. Only sequencers have local pointers.
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 adds some statistics to garnet that record the activity
of certain structures in the on-chip network. These statistics, in a later
patch, will be used for computing the energy consumed by the on-chip network.
Orion is being dropped from ruby. It would be replaced with DSENT
which has better models. Note that the power / energy numbers reported
after this patch has been applied are not for use.
The changeset ad9c042dce54 made changes to the structures under the network
directory to use a map of buffers instead of vector of buffers.
The reasoning was that not all vnets that are created are used and we
needlessly allocate more buffers than required and then iterate over them
while processing network messages. But the move to map resulted in a slow
down which was pointed out by Andreas Hansson. This patch moves things
back to using vector of message buffers.
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.
This patch is the final patch in a series of patches. The aim of the series
is to make ruby more configurable than it was. More specifically, the
connections between controllers are not at all possible (unless one is ready
to make significant changes to the coherence protocol). Moreover the buffers
themselves are magically connected to the network inside the slicc code.
These connections are not part of the configuration file.
This patch makes changes so that these connections will now be made in the
python configuration files associated with the protocols. This requires
each state machine to expose the message buffers it uses for input and output.
So, the patch makes these buffers configurable members of the machines.
The patch drops the slicc code that usd to connect these buffers to the
network. Now these buffers are exposed to the python configuration system
as Master and Slave ports. In the configuration files, any master port
can be connected any slave port. The file pyobject.cc has been modified to
take care of allocating the actual message buffer. This is inline with how
other port connections work.
This helps in configuring the network interfaces from the python script and
these objects no longer rely on the network object for the timing information.
At several places, there are functions that take a cycle value as input
and performs some computation. Along with each such function, another
function was being defined that simply added one more cycle to input and
computed the same function. This patch removes this second copy of the
function. Places where these functions were being called have been updated
to use the original function with argument being current cycle + 1.
