At the same time, rename the trace flags to debug flags since they
have broader usage than simply tracing. This means that
--trace-flags is now --debug-flags and --trace-help is now --debug-help
The goal of the patch is to do away with the CacheMsg class currently in use
in coherence protocols. In place of CacheMsg, the RubyRequest class will used.
This class is already present in slicc_interface/RubyRequest.hh. In fact,
objects of class CacheMsg are generated by copying values from a RubyRequest
object.
The purpose of this patch is to change the way CacheMemory interfaces with
coherence protocols. Currently, whenever a cache controller (defined in the
protocol under consideration) needs to carry out any operation on a cache
block, it looks up the tag hash map and figures out whether or not the block
exists in the cache. In case it does exist, the operation is carried out
(which requires another lookup). As observed through profiling of different
protocols, multiple such lookups take place for a given cache block. It was
noted that the tag lookup takes anything from 10% to 20% of the simulation
time. In order to reduce this time, this patch is being posted.
I have to acknowledge that the many of the thoughts that went in to this
patch belong to Brad.
Changes to CacheMemory, TBETable and AbstractCacheEntry classes:
1. The lookup function belonging to CacheMemory class now returns a pointer
to a cache block entry, instead of a reference. The pointer is NULL in case
the block being looked up is not present in the cache. Similar change has
been carried out in the lookup function of the TBETable class.
2. Function for setting and getting access permission of a cache block have
been moved from CacheMemory class to AbstractCacheEntry class.
3. The allocate function in CacheMemory class now returns pointer to the
allocated cache entry.
Changes to SLICC:
1. Each action now has implicit variables - cache_entry and tbe. cache_entry,
if != NULL, must point to the cache entry for the address on which the action
is being carried out. Similarly, tbe should also point to the transaction
buffer entry of the address on which the action is being carried out.
2. If a cache entry or a transaction buffer entry is passed on as an
argument to a function, it is presumed that a pointer is being passed on.
3. The cache entry and the tbe pointers received __implicitly__ by the
actions, are passed __explicitly__ to the trigger function.
4. While performing an action, set/unset_cache_entry, set/unset_tbe are to
be used for setting / unsetting cache entry and tbe pointers respectively.
5. is_valid() and is_invalid() has been made available for testing whether
a given pointer 'is not NULL' and 'is NULL' respectively.
6. Local variables are now available, but they are assumed to be pointers
always.
7. It is now possible for an object of the derieved class to make calls to
a function defined in the interface.
8. An OOD token has been introduced in SLICC. It is same as the NULL token
used in C/C++. If you are wondering, OOD stands for Out Of Domain.
9. static_cast can now taken an optional parameter that asks for casting the
given variable to a pointer of the given type.
10. Functions can be annotated with 'return_by_pointer=yes' to return a
pointer.
11. StateMachine has two new variables, EntryType and TBEType. EntryType is
set to the type which inherits from 'AbstractCacheEntry'. There can only be
one such type in the machine. TBEType is set to the type for which 'TBE' is
used as the name.
All the protocols have been modified to conform with the new interface.
In addition to obvious changes, this required a slight change to the slicc
grammar to allow types with :: in them. Otherwise slicc barfs on std::string
which we need for the headers that slicc generates.
Cleaned up the ruby profilers by moving the memory controller profiling code
out of the main profiler object and into a separate object similar to the
current CacheProfiler. Both the CacheProfiler and MemCntrlProfiler are
specific to a particular Ruby object, CacheMemory and MemoryControl
respectively. Therefore, these profilers should not be SimObjects and
created by the python configuration system, but instead private objects. This
simplifies the creation of these profilers.
This patch includes the necessary changes to connect ruby objects using
the python configuration system. Mainly it consists of removing
unnecessary ruby object pointers and connecting the necessary object
pointers using the generated param objects. This patch includes the
slicc changes necessary to connect generated ruby objects together using
the python configuraiton system.
The necessary companion conversion of Ruby objects generated by SLICC
are converted to M5 SimObjects in the following patch, so this patch
alone does not compile.
Conversion of Garnet network models is also handled in a separate
patch; that code is temporarily disabled from compiling to allow
testing of interim code.
