In FS mode the syscall function will panic, but the interface will be
consistent and code which calls syscall can be compiled in. This will allow,
for instance, instructions that use syscall to be built unconditionally but
then not returned by the decoder.
This change pulls the instruction decoding machinery (including caches) out of
the StaticInst class and puts it into its own class. This has a few intrinsic
benefits. First, the StaticInst code, which has gotten to be quite large, gets
simpler. Second, the code that handles decode caching is now separated out
into its own component and can be looked at in isolation, making it easier to
understand. I took the opportunity to restructure the code a bit which will
hopefully also help.
Beyond that, this change also lays some ground work for each ISA to have its
own, potentially stateful decode object. We'd be able to include less
contextualizing information in the ExtMachInst objects since that context
would be applied at the decoder. Also, the decoder could "know" ahead of time
that all the instructions it's going to see are going to be, for instance, 64
bit mode, and it will have one less thing to check when it decodes them.
Because the decode caching mechanism has been separated out, it's now possible
to have multiple caches which correspond to different types of decoding
context. Having one cache for each element of the cross product of different
configurations may become prohibitive, so it may be desirable to clear out the
cache when relatively static state changes and not to have one for each
setting.
Because the decode function is no longer universally accessible as a static
member of the StaticInst class, a new function was added to the ThreadContexts
that returns the applicable decode object.
readBytes and writeBytes had the word "bytes" in their names because they
accessed blobs of bytes. This distinguished them from the read and write
functions which handled higher level data types. Because those functions don't
exist any more, this change renames readBytes and writeBytes to more general
names, readMem and writeMem, which reflect the fact that they are how you read
and write memory. This also makes their names more consistent with the
register reading/writing functions, although those are still read and set for
some reason.
if a faulting instruction reaches an execution unit,
then ignore it and pass it through the pipeline.
Once we recognize the fault in the graduation unit,
dont allow a second fault to creep in on the same cycle.
Add a few constants and functions that the InOrder model wants for SPARC.
* * *
sparc: add eaComp function
InOrder separates the address generation from the actual access so give
Sparc that functionality
* * *
sparc: add control flags for branches
branch predictors and other cpu model functions need to know specific information
about branches, so add the necessary flags here
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
remove constructors that werent being used (it just gets confusing)
use initialization list for all the variables instead of relying on initVars()
function
-use a pointer to CacheReqPacket instead of PacketPtr so correct destructors
get called on packet deletion
- make sure to delete the packet if the cache blocks the sendTiming request
or for some reason we dont use the packet
- dont overwrite memory requests since in the worst case an instruction will
be replaying a request so no need to keep allocating a new request
- we dont use retryPkt so delete it
- fetch code was split out already, so just assert that this is a memory
reference inst. and that the staticInst is available
ARM instructions updating cumulative flags (ARM FP exceptions and saturation
flags) are not serialized.
Added aliases for ARM FP exceptions and saturation flags in FPSCR. Removed
write accesses to the FP condition codes for most ARM VFP instructions: only
VCMP and VCMPE instructions update the FP condition codes. Removed a potential
cause of seg. faults in the O3 model for NEON memory macro-ops (ARM).
This change modifies the way prefetches work. They are now like normal loads
that don't writeback a register. Previously prefetches were supposed to call
prefetch() on the exection context, so they executed with execute() methods
instead of initiateAcc() completeAcc(). The prefetch() methods for all the CPUs
are blank, meaning that they get executed, but don't actually do anything.
On Alpha dead cache copy code was removed and prefetches are now normal ops.
They count as executed operations, but still don't do anything and IsMemRef is
not longer set on them.
On ARM IsDataPrefetch or IsInstructionPreftech is now set on all prefetch
instructions. The timing simple CPU doesn't try to do anything special for
prefetches now and they execute with the normal memory code path.
This change is a low level and pervasive reorganization of how PCs are managed
in M5. Back when Alpha was the only ISA, there were only 2 PCs to worry about,
the PC and the NPC, and the lsb of the PC signaled whether or not you were in
PAL mode. As other ISAs were added, we had to add an NNPC, micro PC and next
micropc, x86 and ARM introduced variable length instruction sets, and ARM
started to keep track of mode bits in the PC. Each CPU model handled PCs in
its own custom way that needed to be updated individually to handle the new
dimensions of variability, or, in the case of ARMs mode-bit-in-the-pc hack,
the complexity could be hidden in the ISA at the ISA implementation's expense.
Areas like the branch predictor hadn't been updated to handle branch delay
slots or micropcs, and it turns out that had introduced a significant (10s of
percent) performance bug in SPARC and to a lesser extend MIPS. Rather than
perpetuate the problem by reworking O3 again to handle the PC features needed
by x86, this change was introduced to rework PC handling in a more modular,
transparent, and hopefully efficient way.
PC type:
Rather than having the superset of all possible elements of PC state declared
in each of the CPU models, each ISA defines its own PCState type which has
exactly the elements it needs. A cross product of canned PCState classes are
defined in the new "generic" ISA directory for ISAs with/without delay slots
and microcode. These are either typedef-ed or subclassed by each ISA. To read
or write this structure through a *Context, you use the new pcState() accessor
which reads or writes depending on whether it has an argument. If you just
want the address of the current or next instruction or the current micro PC,
you can get those through read-only accessors on either the PCState type or
the *Contexts. These are instAddr(), nextInstAddr(), and microPC(). Note the
move away from readPC. That name is ambiguous since it's not clear whether or
not it should be the actual address to fetch from, or if it should have extra
bits in it like the PAL mode bit. Each class is free to define its own
functions to get at whatever values it needs however it needs to to be used in
ISA specific code. Eventually Alpha's PAL mode bit could be moved out of the
PC and into a separate field like ARM.
These types can be reset to a particular pc (where npc = pc +
sizeof(MachInst), nnpc = npc + sizeof(MachInst), upc = 0, nupc = 1 as
appropriate), printed, serialized, and compared. There is a branching()
function which encapsulates code in the CPU models that checked if an
instruction branched or not. Exactly what that means in the context of branch
delay slots which can skip an instruction when not taken is ambiguous, and
ideally this function and its uses can be eliminated. PCStates also generally
know how to advance themselves in various ways depending on if they point at
an instruction, a microop, or the last microop of a macroop. More on that
later.
Ideally, accessing all the PCs at once when setting them will improve
performance of M5 even though more data needs to be moved around. This is
because often all the PCs need to be manipulated together, and by getting them
all at once you avoid multiple function calls. Also, the PCs of a particular
thread will have spatial locality in the cache. Previously they were grouped
by element in arrays which spread out accesses.
Advancing the PC:
The PCs were previously managed entirely by the CPU which had to know about PC
semantics, try to figure out which dimension to increment the PC in, what to
set NPC/NNPC, etc. These decisions are best left to the ISA in conjunction
with the PC type itself. Because most of the information about how to
increment the PC (mainly what type of instruction it refers to) is contained
in the instruction object, a new advancePC virtual function was added to the
StaticInst class. Subclasses provide an implementation that moves around the
right element of the PC with a minimal amount of decision making. In ISAs like
Alpha, the instructions always simply assign NPC to PC without having to worry
about micropcs, nnpcs, etc. The added cost of a virtual function call should
be outweighed by not having to figure out as much about what to do with the
PCs and mucking around with the extra elements.
One drawback of making the StaticInsts advance the PC is that you have to
actually have one to advance the PC. This would, superficially, seem to
require decoding an instruction before fetch could advance. This is, as far as
I can tell, realistic. fetch would advance through memory addresses, not PCs,
perhaps predicting new memory addresses using existing ones. More
sophisticated decisions about control flow would be made later on, after the
instruction was decoded, and handed back to fetch. If branching needs to
happen, some amount of decoding needs to happen to see that it's a branch,
what the target is, etc. This could get a little more complicated if that gets
done by the predecoder, but I'm choosing to ignore that for now.
Variable length instructions:
To handle variable length instructions in x86 and ARM, the predecoder now
takes in the current PC by reference to the getExtMachInst function. It can
modify the PC however it needs to (by setting NPC to be the PC + instruction
length, for instance). This could be improved since the CPU doesn't know if
the PC was modified and always has to write it back.
ISA parser:
To support the new API, all PC related operand types were removed from the
parser and replaced with a PCState type. There are two warts on this
implementation. First, as with all the other operand types, the PCState still
has to have a valid operand type even though it doesn't use it. Second, using
syntax like PCS.npc(target) doesn't work for two reasons, this looks like the
syntax for operand type overriding, and the parser can't figure out if you're
reading or writing. Instructions that use the PCS operand (which I've
consistently called it) need to first read it into a local variable,
manipulate it, and then write it back out.
Return address stack:
The return address stack needed a little extra help because, in the presence
of branch delay slots, it has to merge together elements of the return PC and
the call PC. To handle that, a buildRetPC utility function was added. There
are basically only two versions in all the ISAs, but it didn't seem short
enough to put into the generic ISA directory. Also, the branch predictor code
in O3 and InOrder were adjusted so that they always store the PC of the actual
call instruction in the RAS, not the next PC. If the call instruction is a
microop, the next PC refers to the next microop in the same macroop which is
probably not desirable. The buildRetPC function advances the PC intelligently
to the next macroop (in an ISA specific way) so that that case works.
Change in stats:
There were no change in stats except in MIPS and SPARC in the O3 model. MIPS
runs in about 9% fewer ticks. SPARC runs with 30%-50% fewer ticks, which could
likely be improved further by setting call/return instruction flags and taking
advantage of the RAS.
TODO:
Add != operators to the PCState classes, defined trivially to be !(a==b).
Smooth out places where PCs are split apart, passed around, and put back
together later. I think this might happen in SPARC's fault code. Add ISA
specific constructors that allow setting PC elements without calling a bunch
of accessors. Try to eliminate the need for the branching() function. Factor
out Alpha's PAL mode pc bit into a separate flag field, and eliminate places
where it's blindly masked out or tested in the PC.
Also move the "Fault" reference counted pointer type into a separate file,
sim/fault.hh. It would be better to name this less similarly to sim/faults.hh
to reduce confusion, but fault.hh matches the name of the type. We could change
Fault to FaultPtr to match other pointer types, and then changing the name of
the file would make more sense.
when insts execute, they mark the time they finish to be used for subsequent isnts
they may need forwarding of data. However, the regdepmap was using the wrong
value to index into the destination operands of the instruction to be forwarded.
Thus, in some cases, we are checking to see if the 3rd destination register
for an instruction is executed at a certain time, when there is only 1 dest. register
valid. Thus, we get a bad, uninitialized time value that will stall forwarding
causing performance loss but still the correct execution.
TLBUnit no longer used and we also get rid of memAccSize and memAccFlags functions added to ISA and StaticInst
since TLB is not a separate resource to acquire. Instead, TLB access is done before any read/write to memory
and the result is checked before it's sent out to memory.
* * *
inorder was incorrectly storing FP values and confusing the integer/fp storage view of floating point operations. A big issue was knowing trying to infer when were doing single or double precision access
because this lets you know the size of value to store (32-64 bits). This isnt exactly straightforward since alpha uses all 64-bit regs while mips/sparc uses a dual-reg view. by getting this value from
the actual floating point register file, the model can figure out what it needs to store
Remove subinstructions eaComp/memAcc since unused in CPU Models. Instead, create eaComp that is visible from StaticInst object. Gives InOrder model capability of generating address without actually initiating access
* * *
Basically merge it in with Halted.
Also had to get rid of a few other functions that
called ThreadContext::deallocate(), including:
- InOrderCPU's setThreadRescheduleCondition.
- ThreadContext::exit(). This function was there to avoid terminating
simulation when one thread out of a multi-thread workload exits, but we
need to find a better (non-cpu-centric) way.
