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.
CacheMemory and DirectoryMemory lookup functions return pointers to entries
stored in the memory. Bring PerfectCacheMemory in line with this convention,
and clean up SLICC code generation that was in place solely to handle
references like that which was returned by PerfectCacheMemory::lookup.
The RubyCache (CacheMemory) latency parameter is only used for top-level caches
instantiated for Ruby coherence protocols. However, the top-level cache hit
latency is assessed by the Sequencer as accesses flow through to the cache
hierarchy. Further, protocol state machines should be enforcing these cache hit
latencies, but RubyCaches do not expose their latency to any existng state
machines through the SLICC/C++ interface. Thus, the RubyCache latency parameter
is superfluous for all caches. This is confusing for users.
As a step toward pushing L0/L1 cache hit latency into the top-level cache
controllers, move their latencies out of the RubyCache declarations and over to
their Sequencers. Eventually, these Sequencer parameters should be exposed as
parameters to the top-level cache controllers, which should assess the latency.
NOTE: Assessing these latencies in the cache controllers will require modifying
each to eliminate instantaneous Ruby hit callbacks in transitions that finish
accesses, which is likely a large undertaking.
The Packet::get() and Packet::set() methods both have very strange
semantics. Currently, they automatically convert between the guest
system's endianness and the host system's endianness. This behavior is
usually undesired and unexpected.
This patch introduces three new method pairs to access data:
* getLE() / setLE() - Get data stored as little endian.
* getBE() / setBE() - Get data stored as big endian.
* get(ByteOrder) / set(v, ByteOrder) - Configurable endianness
For example, a little endian device that is receiving a write request
will use teh getLE() method to get the data from the packet.
The old interface will be deprecated once all existing devices have
been ported to the new interface.
This patch removes the extraneous flags and attributes from the
request and packet, and simply leaves the new commands. The change
introduced when adding acquire/release breaks all compatibility with
existing traces, and there is really no need for any new flags and
attributes. The commands should be sufficient.
This patch fixes packet tracing (urgent), and also removes the
unnecessary complexity.
This changeset moves the access trace functionality from the
CommMonitor into a separate probe. The probe can be hooked up to any
component that exports probe points of the type ProbePoints::Packet.
This patch moves the dependency on Google's Protocol Buffers library
from the CommMonitor to the MemTraceProbe, which means that the
CommMonitor (including stack distance profiling) no long depends on
it.
This changeset removes the stack distance calculator hooks from the
CommMonitor class and implements a stack distance calculator as a
memory system probe instead. The probe can be hooked up to any
component that exports probe points of the type ProbePoints::Packet.
This changeset adds a standardized probe point type to monitor packets
in the memory system and adds two probe points to the CommMonitor
class. These probe points enable monitoring of successfully delivered
requests and successfully delivered responses.
Memory system probe listeners should use the BaseMemProbe base class
to provide a unified configuration interface and reuse listener
registration code. Unlike the ProbeListenerObject class, the
BaseMemProbe allows objects to be wired to multiple ProbeManager
instances as long as they use the same probe point name.
There are 2 problems with the existing checkpoint and restore code in ruby.
The first is that when the event queue is altered by ruby during serialization,
some events that are currently scheduled cannot be found (e.g. the event to
stop simulation that always lives on the queue), causing a panic.
The second is that ruby is sometimes serialized after the memory system,
meaning that the dirty data in its cache is flushed back to memory too late
and so isn't included in the checkpoint.
These are fixed by implementing memory writeback in ruby, using the same
technique of hijacking the event queue, but first descheduling all events that
are currently on it. They are saved, along with their scheduled time, so that
the event queue can be faithfully reconstructed after writeback has finished.
Events with the AutoDelete flag set will delete themselves when they
are descheduled, causing an error when attempting to schedule them again.
This is fixed by simply not recording them when taking them off the queue.
Writeback is still implemented using flushing, so the cache recorder object,
that is created to generate the trace and manage flushing, is kept
around and used during serialization to write the trace to disk.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
1. Eliminate state NP in L0 and L1 Caches: The two states 'NP' and 'I' both
mean that the cache block is not present in the cache. 'I' also means that the
cache entry has been allocated. This causes problems when we do not correctly
initialize the cache entry when it is re-used. Hence, this patch eliminates
the state NP altogether. Everytime a new block comes into the cache, a cache
entry is allocated. Everytime a block leaves, the corresponding entry is
deallocated.
2. Separate transient state for instruction fetches: purely for accouting
purposes.
3. Drop state IS_I in L1 Cache and the message type STALE_DATA: when
invalidation is received for a block in IS, the block used to be moved to IS_I.
This meant that the data that would arrive in future would be used but not
stored since the controller lost the permissions after gaining them. This
state is being dropped and now invalidation messages would not processed till
the data has arrived. This also means that STALE_DATA type is not longer
required.
The level 2 controller has a bug. In one particular action, the data block was
copied from a message irrespective whether the block is dirty or not. In cases
when L1 sends no data, the data value copied was incorrect.
For many years the slicc symbol table has supported overloaded functions in
external classes. This patch extends that support to functions that are not
part of classes (a.k.a. no parent). For example, this support allows slicc
to understand that mapAddressToRange is overloaded and the NodeID is an
optional parameter.
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.
Adds features to allow protocols to reschedule controllers when conditionally
stalling within inport logic or actions. Also insures that resource and
protocol stalls are re-evaluated the next cycle.
This patch adds support that allows the replacement policy to identify each
cache block's access permission. This information can be useful when making
replacement decisions.
The Ruby banked array resource checks (initiated from SLICC) did a check and
allocate at the same time. If a transition needs more than one resource, then
it might check/allocate resource #1, then fail to get resource #2. Another
transition might then try to get the same resources, but in reverse order.
Deadlock.
This patch separates resource checking and resource reservation into two
steps to avoid deadlock.
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 patch adds a few helpful functions that allow .sm files to directly
invalidate all cache blocks using a trigger queue rather than rely on each
individual cache block to be invalidated via requests from the mandatory
queue.
This patch allows DPRINTFs to be used in SLICC state machines similar to how
they are used by the rest of gem5. Previously all DPRINTFs in the .sm files
had to use the RubySlicc flag.
This patch exposes the tag and data array latencies to the SLICC state machines
so that it can be used to determine the correct enqueue latency for response
messages.
To have multiple Entry types (e.g., a cache Entry type and
a directory Entry type), just declare one of them as a secondary
type by using the pair 'main="false"', e.g.:
structure(DirEntry, desc="...", interface="AbstractCacheEntry",
main="false") {
...and the primary type would be declared:
structure(Entry, desc="...", interface="AbstractCacheEntry") {
This patch fixes the type handling when prefix operations are used. Previously
prefix operators would assume a void return type, which made it impossible to
combine prefix operations with other expressions. This patch allows SLICC
programmers to use prefix operations more naturally.
This patches adds support for transitions of the form:
transition(START, EVENTS, *) { ACTIONS }
This allows a machine to collapse states that differ only in the next state
transition to collapse into one, and can help shorten/simplfy some protocols
significantly.
When * is encountered as an end state of a transition, the next state is
determined by calling the machine-specific getNextState function. The next
state is determined before any actions of the transition execute, and
therefore the next state calculation cannot depend on any of the transition
actions.
This patch allows SLICC protocols to use more than one message type with a
message buffer. For example, you can declare two in ports as such:
in_port(ResponseQueue_in, ResponseMsg, responseFromDir, rank=3) { ... }
in_port(tgtResponseQueue_in, TgtResponseMsg, responseFromDir, rank=2) { ... }
This patch was created by Bihn Pham during his internship at AMD.
There is no need to delay hit callback response messages by a cycle because
the response latency is already incurred in the Ruby protocol. This ensures
correct timing of memory instructions.
This patch removes the RequestCause, and also simplifies how we
schedule the sending of packets through the memory-side port. The
deassertion of bus requests is removed as it is not used.
This patch makes cache sets aware of the way number. This enables
some nice features such as the ablity to restrict way allocation. The
implemented mechanism allows to set a maximum way number to be
allocated 'k' which must fulfill 0 < k <= N (where N is the number of
ways). In the future more sophisticated mechasims can be implemented.
This patch changes how writebacks communicate whether the line is
passed as modified or owned. Previously we relied on the
isSupplyExclusive mechanism, which was originally designed to avoid
unecessary snoops.
For normal cache requests we use the sharedAsserted mechanism to
determine if a block should be marked writeable or not, and with this
patch we transition the writebacks to also use this
mechanism. Conceptually this is cleaner and more consistent.
Some minor fixes and removal of dead code. Changing the flags to be
enums rather than static const (to avoid any linking issues caused by
the latter). Also adding a getBlockAddr member which hopefully can
slowly finds its way into caches, snoop filters etc.
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.
The drain() call currently passes around a DrainManager pointer, which
is now completely pointless since there is only ever one global
DrainManager in the system. It also contains vestiges from the time
when SimObjects had to keep track of their child objects that needed
draining.
This changeset moves all of the DrainState handling to the Drainable
base class and changes the drain() and drainResume() calls to reflect
this. Particularly, the drain() call has been updated to take no
parameters (the DrainManager argument isn't needed) and return a
DrainState instead of an unsigned integer (there is no point returning
anything other than 0 or 1 any more). Drainable objects should return
either DrainState::Draining (equivalent to returning 1 in the old
system) if they need more time to drain or DrainState::Drained
(equivalent to returning 0 in the old system) if they are already in a
consistent state. Returning DrainState::Running is considered an
error.
Drain done signalling is now done through the signalDrainDone() method
in the Drainable class instead of using the DrainManager directly. The
new call checks if the state of the object is DrainState::Draining
before notifying the drain manager. This means that it is safe to call
signalDrainDone() without first checking if the simulator has
requested draining. The intention here is to reduce the code needed to
implement draining in simple objects.
Draining is currently done by traversing the SimObject graph and
calling drain()/drainResume() on the SimObjects. This is not ideal
when non-SimObjects (e.g., ports) need draining since this means that
SimObjects owning those objects need to be aware of this.
This changeset moves the responsibility for finding objects that need
draining from SimObjects and the Python-side of the simulator to the
DrainManager. The DrainManager now maintains a set of all objects that
need draining. To reduce the overhead in classes owning non-SimObjects
that need draining, objects inheriting from Drainable now
automatically register with the DrainManager. If such an object is
destroyed, it is automatically unregistered. This means that drain()
and drainResume() should never be called directly on a Drainable
object.
While implementing the new functionality, the DrainManager has now
been made thread safe. In practice, this means that it takes a lock
whenever it manipulates the set of Drainable objects since SimObjects
in different threads may create Drainable objects
dynamically. Similarly, the drain counter is now an atomic_uint, which
ensures that it is manipulated correctly when objects signal that they
are done draining.
A nice side effect of these changes is that it makes the drain state
changes stricter, which the simulation scripts can exploit to avoid
redundant drains.
The drain state enum is currently a part of the Drainable
interface. The same state machine will be used by the DrainManager to
identify the global state of the simulator. Make the drain state a
global typed enum to better cater for this usage scenario.
Objects that are can be serialized are supposed to inherit from the
Serializable class. This class is meant to provide a unified API for
such objects. However, so far it has mainly been used by SimObjects
due to some fundamental design limitations. This changeset redesigns
to the serialization interface to make it more generic and hide the
underlying checkpoint storage. Specifically:
* Add a set of APIs to serialize into a subsection of the current
object. Previously, objects that needed this functionality would
use ad-hoc solutions using nameOut() and section name
generation. In the new world, an object that implements the
interface has the methods serializeSection() and
unserializeSection() that serialize into a named /subsection/ of
the current object. Calling serialize() serializes an object into
the current section.
* Move the name() method from Serializable to SimObject as it is no
longer needed for serialization. The fully qualified section name
is generated by the main serialization code on the fly as objects
serialize sub-objects.
* Add a scoped ScopedCheckpointSection helper class. Some objects
need to serialize data structures, that are not deriving from
Serializable, into subsections. Previously, this was done using
nameOut() and manual section name generation. To simplify this,
this changeset introduces a ScopedCheckpointSection() helper
class. When this class is instantiated, it adds a new /subsection/
and subsequent serialization calls during the lifetime of this
helper class happen inside this section (or a subsection in case
of nested sections).
* The serialize() call is now const which prevents accidental state
manipulation during serialization. Objects that rely on modifying
state can use the serializeOld() call instead. The default
implementation simply calls serialize(). Note: The old-style calls
need to be explicitly called using the
serializeOld()/serializeSectionOld() style APIs. These are used by
default when serializing SimObjects.
* Both the input and output checkpoints now use their own named
types. This hides underlying checkpoint implementation from
objects that need checkpointing and makes it easier to change the
underlying checkpoint storage code.
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.
The accessor function getDestination() for Destination variable in the
coherence message clashes with the getDestination() that is part of the Message
class. Hence the name change.
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.
This patch increases the default read/write buffer sizes for the DDR4
controller config to values that are more suitable for the high
bandwidth and high bank count.
This patch updates the command arbitration so that bank group timing
as well as rank-to-rank delays will be taken into account. The
resulting arbitration no longer selects commands (prepped or not) that
cannot issue seamlessly if there are commands that can issue
back-to-back, minimizing the effect of rank-to-rank (tCS) & same bank
group (tCCD_L) delays.
The arbitration selects a new command based on the following priority.
Within each priority band, the arbitration will use FCFS to select the
appropriate command:
1) Bank is prepped and burst can issue seamlessly, without a bubble
2) Bank is not prepped, but can prep and issue seamlessly, without a
bubble
3) Bank is prepped but burst cannot issue seamlessly. In this case, a
bubble will occur on the bus
Thus, to enable more parallelism in subsequent selections, an
unprepped packet is given higher priority if the bank prep can be
hidden. If the bank prep cannot be hidden, the selection logic will
choose a prepped packet that cannot issue seamlessly if one exist.
Otherwise, the default selection will choose the packet with the
minimum bank prep delay.
This patch adds a simple lookup structure to avoid iterating over the
write queue to find read matches, and for the merging of write
bursts. Instead of relying on iteration we simply store a set of
currently-buffered write-burst addresses and compare against
these. For the reads we still perform the iteration if we have a
match. For the writes, we rely entirely on the set. Note that there
are corner-cases where sub-bursts would actually not be mergeable
without a read-modify-write. We ignore these cases and opt for speed.
This patch changes how the crossbar classes deal with
responses. Instead of forwarding responses directly and burdening the
neighbouring modules in paying for the latency (through the
pkt->headerDelay), we now queue them before sending them.
The coherency protocol is not affected as requests and any snoop
requests/responses are still passed on in zero time. Thus, the
responses end up paying for any header delay accumulated when passing
through the crossbar. Any latency incurred on the request path will be
paid for on the response side, if no other module has dealt with it.
As a result of this patch, responses are returned at a later
point. This affects the number of outstanding transactions, and quite
a few regressions see an impact in blocking due to no MSHRs, increased
cache-miss latencies, etc.
Going forward we should be able to use the same concept also for snoop
responses, and any request that is not an express snoop.
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).
WriteInvalidateReq ensures that a whole-line write does not incur the
cost of first doing a read exclusive, only to later overwrite the
data. This patch splits the existing WriteInvalidateReq into a
WriteLineReq, which is done locally, and an InvalidateReq that is sent
out throughout the memory system. The WriteLineReq re-uses the normal
WriteResp.
The change allows us to better express the difference between the
cache that is performing the write, and the ones that are merely
invalidating. As a consequence, we no longer have to rely on the
isTopLevel flag. Moreover, the actual memory in the system does not
see the intitial write, only the writeback. We were marking the
written line as dirty already, so there is really no need to also push
the write all the way to the memory.
The overall flow of the write-invalidate operation remains the same,
i.e. the operation is only carried out once the response for the
invalidate comes back. This patch adds the InvalidateResp for this
very reason.
This patch adds two new read requests packets:
ReadCleanReq - For a cache to explicitly request clean data. The
response is thus exclusive or shared, but not owned or modified. The
read-only caches (see previous patch) use this request type to ensure
they do not get dirty data.
ReadSharedReq - We add this to distinguish cache read requests from
those issued by other masters, such as devices and CPUs. Thus, devices
use ReadReq, and caches use ReadCleanReq, ReadExReq, or
ReadSharedReq. For the latter, the response can be any state, shared,
exclusive, owned or even modified.
Both ReadCleanReq and ReadSharedReq re-use the normal ReadResp. The
two transactions are aligned with the emerging cache-coherent TLM
standard and the AMBA nomenclature.
With this change, the normal ReadReq should never be used by a cache,
and is reserved for the actual (non-caching) masters in the system. We
thus have a way of identifying if a request came from a cache or
not. The introduction of ReadSharedReq thus removes the need for the
current isTopLevel hack, and also allows us to stop relying on
checking the packet size to determine if the source is a cache or
not. This is fixed in follow-on patches.
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.
This patch adds eviction notices to the caches, to provide accurate
tracking of cache blocks in snoop filters. We add the CleanEvict
message to the memory heirarchy and use both CleanEvicts and
Writebacks with BLOCK_CACHED flags to propagate notice of clean and
dirty evictions respectively, down the memory hierarchy. Note that the
BLOCK_CACHED flag indicates whether there exist any copies of the
evicted block in the caches above the evicting cache.
The purpose of the CleanEvict message is to notify snoop filters of
silent evictions in the relevant caches. The CleanEvict message
behaves much like a Writeback. CleanEvict is a write and a request but
unlike a Writeback, CleanEvict does not have data and does not need
exclusive access to the block. The cache generates the CleanEvict
message on a fill resulting in eviction of a clean block. Before
travelling downwards CleanEvict requests generate zero-time snoop
requests to check if the same block is cached in upper levels of the
memory heirarchy. If the block exists, the cache discards the
CleanEvict message. The snoops check the tags, writeback queue and the
MSHRs of upper level caches in a manner similar to snoops generated
from HardPFReqs. Currently CleanEvicts keep travelling towards main
memory unless they encounter the block corresponding to their address
or reach main memory (since we have no well defined point of
serialisation). Main memory simply discards CleanEvict messages.
We have modified the behavior of Writebacks, such that they generate
snoops to check for the presence of blocks in upper level caches. It
is possible in our current implmentation for a lower level cache to be
writing back a block while a shared copy of the same block exists in
the upper level cache. If the snoops find the same block in upper
level caches, we set the BLOCK_CACHED flag in the Writeback message.
We have also added logic to account for interaction of other message
types with CleanEvicts waiting in the writeback queue. A simple
example is of a response arriving at a cache removing any CleanEvicts
to the same address from the cache's writeback queue.
This patch fixes an issue which is very wide spread in the codebase,
causing sporadic linking failures. The issue is that we declare static
const class variables in the header, without any definition (as part
of a source file). In most cases the compiler propagates the value and
we have no issues. However, especially for less optimising builds such
as debug, we get sporadic linking failures due to undefined
references.
This patch fixes the Request class, by turning the static const flags
and master IDs into C++11 typed enums.
Remove the assert when adding a port to the RubyPort retry list.
Instead of asserting, just ignore the added port, since it's
already on the list.
Without this patch, Ruby+detailed fails for even the simplest tests
Snoop packets share the request pointer with the originating
packets. We need to ensure that the snoop packet destruction does not
delete the request. Snoops are used for reads, invalidations,
HardPFReqs, Writebacks and CleansEvicts. Reads, invalidations, and
HardPFReqs need a response so their snoops do not delete the
request. For Writebacks and CleanEvicts we need to check explicitly
for whethere the current packet is an express snoop, in whcih case do
not delete the request.
Fixes missed forward eviction to CPU. With the O3CPU this can lead to load-load
reordering, as the LQ is never notified of the invalidate.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
A single HMC-2500 x32 model based on:
[1] DRAMSpec: a high-level DRAM bank modelling tool developed at the University
of Kaiserslautern. This high level tool uses RC (resistance-capacitance) and CV
(capacitance-voltage) models to estimate the DRAM bank latency and power
numbers.
[2] A Logic-base Interconnect for Supporting Near Memory Computation in the
Hybrid Memory Cube (E. Azarkhish et. al) Assumed for the HMC model is a 30 nm
technology node. The modelled HMC consists of a 4 Gbit part with 4 layers
connected with TSVs. Each layer has 16 vaults and each vault consists of 2
banks per layer. In order to be able to use the same controller used for 2D
DRAM generations for HMC, the following analogy is done: Channel (DDR) => Vault
(HMC) device_size (DDR) => size of a single layer in a vault ranks per channel
(DDR) => number of layers banks per rank (DDR) => banks per layer devices per
rank (DDR) => devices per layer ( 1 for HMC). The parameters for which no
input is available are inherited from the DDR3 configuration.
A step towards removing RubyMemoryControl and shift users to
DRAMCtrl. The latter is faster, more representative, very versatile,
and is integrated with power models.
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.
Sometimes, we need to defer an express snoop in an MSHR, but the original
request might complete and deallocate the original pkt->req. In those cases,
create a copy of the request so that someone who is inspecting the delayed
snoop can also inspect the request still. All of this is rather hacky, but the
allocation / linking and general life-time management of Packet and Request is
rather tricky. Deleting the copy is another tricky area, testing so far has
shown that the right copy is deleted at the right time.
The Request::UNCACHEABLE flag currently has two different
functions. The first, and obvious, function is to prevent the memory
system from caching data in the request. The second function is to
prevent reordering and speculation in CPU models.
This changeset gives the order/speculation requirement a separate flag
(Request::STRICT_ORDER). This flag prevents CPU models from doing the
following optimizations:
* Speculation: CPU models are not allowed to issue speculative
loads.
* Write combining: CPU models and caches are not allowed to merge
writes to the same cache line.
Note: The memory system may still reorder accesses unless the
UNCACHEABLE flag is set. It is therefore expected that the
STRICT_ORDER flag is combined with the UNCACHEABLE flag to prevent
this behavior.
This patch takes a last step in fixing issues related to uncacheable
accesses. We do not separate uncacheable memory from uncacheable
devices, and in cases where it is really memory, there are valid
scenarios where we need to snoop since we do not support cache
maintenance instructions (yet). On snooping an uncacheable access we
thus provide data if possible. In essence this makes uncacheable
accesses IO coherent.
The snoop filter is also queried to steer the snoops, but not updated
since the uncacheable accesses do not allocate a block.
This patch ensures that we pass on information about a packet being
shared (rather than exclusive), when forwarding a packet downstream.
Without this patch there is a risk that a downstream cache considers
the line exclusive when it really isn't.
This patch adds a missing counter update for the uncacheable
accesses. By updating this counter we also get a meaningful average
latency for uncacheable accesses (previously inf).
This patch changes the cache implementation to rely on virtual methods
rather than using the replacement policy as a template argument.
There is no impact on the simulation performance, and overall the
changes make it easier to modify (and subclass) the cache and/or
replacement policy.
Both open_adaptive and close_adaptive page polices keep the page
open if a row hit is found. If a row hit is not found, close_adaptive
page policy precharges the row, and open_adaptive policy precharges
the row only if there is a bank conflict request waiting in the queue.
This patch makes the checks for above conditions simpler.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
Restoring from a checkpoint with ruby + the DRAMCtrl memory model was not
working, because ruby and DRAMCtrl disagreed on the current tick during warmup.
Since there is no reason to do timing requests during warmup, use functional
requests instead.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
The stride prefetcher had a hardcoded number of contexts (i.e. master-IDs)
that it could handle. Since master IDs need to be unique per system, and
every core, cache etc. requires a separate master port, a static limit on
these does not make much sense.
Instead, this patch adds a small hash map that will map all master IDs to
the right prefetch state and dynamically allocates new state for new master
IDs.
This patch changes the order of writeback allocation such that any
writebacks resulting from a tag lookup (e.g. for an uncacheable
access), are added to the writebuffer before any new MSHR entries are
allocated. This ensures that the writebacks logically precedes the new
allocations.
The patch also changes the uncacheable flush to use proper timed (or
atomic) writebacks, as opposed to functional writes.
This patch simplifies the code dealing with uncacheable timing
accesses, aiming to align it with the existing miss handling. Similar
to what we do in atomic, a timing request now goes through
Cache::access (where the block is also flushed), and then proceeds to
ignore any existing MSHR for the block in question. This unifies the
flow for cacheable and uncacheable accesses, and for atomic and timing.
This patch changes how we search for matching MSHRs, ignoring any MSHR
that is allocated for an uncacheable access. By doing so, this patch
fixes a corner case in the MSHRs where incorrect data ended up being
copied into a (cacheable) read packet due to a first uncacheable MSHR
target of size 4, followed by a cacheable target to the same MSHR of
size 64. The latter target was filled with nonsense data.
This patch removes the no-longer-needed
allocateUncachedReadBuffer. Besides the checks it is exactly the same
as allocateMissBuffer and thus provides no value.
This patch aligns all MSHR queue entries to block boundaries to
simplify checks for matches. Previously there were corner cases that
could lead to existing entries not being identified as matches.
There are, rather alarmingly, a few regressions that change with this
patch.
This patch subsumes the PREFETCH_SNOOP_SQUASH flag with the more
generic BLOCK_CACHED flag. Future patches implementing cache eviction
messages can use the BLOCK_CACHED flag in almost the same manner as
hardware prefetches use the PREFETCH_SNOOP_SQUASH flag. The
PREFTECH_SNOOP_FLAG is set if the prefetch target is found in the tags
or the MSHRs in any state, so we are simply replacing calls to
setPrefetchSquashed() with setBlockCached(). The case of where the
prefetch target is found in the writeback MSHRs of upper level caches
continues to be covered by the MEM_INHIBIT flag.
The CommMonitor by default only allows memory traces to be gathered in
timing mode. This patch allows memory traces to be gathered in atomic
mode if all one needs is a functional trace of memory addresses used
and timing information is of a secondary concern.
For some reason we were checking mshr->hasTargets() even though
we had already called mshr->getTarget() unconditionally earlier
in the same function (which asserts if there are no targets).
Get rid of this useless check, and while we're at it get rid
of the redundant call to mshr->getTarget(), since we still have
the value saved in a local var.
Refactor the way that specific MemCmd values are generated for packets.
The new approach is a little more elegant in that we assign the right
value up front, and it's also more amenable to non-heap-allocated
Packet objects.
Also replaced the code in the Minor model that was still doing it the
ad-hoc way.
This is basically a refinement of http://repo.gem5.org/gem5/rev/711eb0e64249.
The 'if (writebacks.size)' check was redundant, because
writeBuffer.findMatches() would return false if the
writebacks list was empty.
Also renamed 'mshr' to 'wb_entry' in this context since
we are pointing at a writebuffer entry and not an MSHR
(even though it's the same C++ class).
This patch changes all the DPRINTF messages in the cache to use
'%#llx' every time a packet address is printed. The inclusion of '#'
ensures '0x' is prepended, and since the address type is a uint64_t %x
really should be %llx.
This patch fixes a rather subtle issue in the sending of MSHR requests
in the cache, where the logic previously did not check for conflicts
between the MSRH queue and the write queue when requests were not
ready. The correct thing to do is to always check, since not having a
ready MSHR does not guarantee that there is no conflict.
The underlying problem seems to have slipped past due to the symmetric
timings used for the write queue and MSHR queue. However, with the
recent timing changes the bug caused regressions to fail.
This patch changes the valid-bytes start/end to a proper byte
mask. With the changes in timing introduced in previous patches there
are more packets waiting in queues, and there are regressions using
the checker CPU failing due to non-contigous read data being found in
the various cache queues.
This patch also adds some more comments explaining what is going on,
and adds the fourth and missing case to Packet::checkFunctional.
By default, the packet queue is ordered by the ticks of the to-be-sent
packages. With the recent modifications of packages sinking their header time
when their resposne leaves the caches, there could be cases of MSHR targets
being allocated and ordered A, B, but their responses being sent out in the
order B,A. This led to inconsistencies in bus traffic, in particular the snoop
filter observing first a ReadExResp and later a ReadRespWithInv. Logically,
these were ordered the other way around behind the MSHR, but due to the timing
adjustments when inserting into the PacketQueue, they were sent out in the
wrong order on the bus, confusing the snoop filter.
This patch adds a flag (off by default) such that these special cases can
request in-order insertion into the packet queue, which might offset timing
slighty. This is expected to occur rarely and not affect timing results.
This patch makes the caches and memory controllers consume the delay
that is annotated to a packet by the crossbar. Previously many
components simply threw these delays away. Note that the devices still
do not pay for these delays.
This patch introduces a few subclasses to the CoherentXBar and
NoncoherentXBar to distinguish the different uses in the system. We
use the crossbar in a wide range of places: interfacing cores to the
L2, as a system interconnect, connecting I/O and peripherals,
etc. Needless to say, these crossbars have very different performance,
and the clock frequency alone is not enough to distinguish these
scenarios.
Instead of trying to capture every possible case, this patch
introduces dedicated subclasses for the three primary use-cases:
L2XBar, SystemXBar and IOXbar. More can be added if needed, and the
defaults can be overridden.
This patch introduces latencies in crossbar that were neglected
before. In particular, it adds three parameters in crossbar model:
front_end_latency, forward_latency, and response_latency. Along with
these parameters, three corresponding members are added:
frontEndLatency, forwardLatency, and responseLatency. The coherent
crossbar has an additional snoop_response_latency.
The latency of the request path through the xbar is set as
--> frontEndLatency + forwardLatency
In case the snoop filter is enabled, the request path latency is charged
also by look-up latency of the snoop filter.
--> frontEndLatency + SF(lookupLatency) + forwardLatency.
The latency of the response path through the xbar is set instead as
--> responseLatency.
In case of snoop response, if the response is treated as a normal response
the latency associated is again
--> responseLatency;
If instead it is forwarded as snoop response we add an additional variable
+ snoopResponseLatency
and the latency associated is
--> snoopResponseLatency;
Furthermore, this patch lets the crossbar progress on the next clock
edge after an unused retry, changing the time the crossbar considers
itself busy after sending a retry that was not acted upon.
This patch fixes a long-standing isue with the port flow
control. Before this patch the retry mechanism was shared between all
different packet classes. As a result, a snoop response could get
stuck behind a request waiting for a retry, even if the send/recv
functions were split. This caused message-dependent deadlocks in
stress-test scenarios.
The patch splits the retry into one per packet (message) class. Thus,
sendTimingReq has a corresponding recvReqRetry, sendTimingResp has
recvRespRetry etc. Most of the changes to the code involve simply
clarifying what type of request a specific object was accepting.
The biggest change in functionality is in the cache downstream packet
queue, facing the memory. This queue was shared by requests and snoop
responses, and it is now split into two queues, each with their own
flow control, but the same physical MasterPort. These changes fixes
the previously seen deadlocks.
This patch resolves a bug with hardware prefetches. Before a hardware prefetch
is sent towards the memory, the system generates a snoop request to check all
caches above the prefetch generating cache for the presence of the prefetth
target. If the prefetch target is found in the tags or the MSHRs of the upper
caches, the cache sets the prefetchSquashed flag in the snoop packet. When the
snoop packet returns with the prefetchSquashed flag set, the prefetch
generating cache deallocates the MSHR reserved for the prefetch. If the
prefetch target is found in the writeback buffer of the upper cache, the cache
sets the memInhibit flag, which signals the prefetch generating cache to
expect the data from the writeback. When the snoop packet returns with the
memInhibitAsserted flag set, it marks the allocated MSHR as inService and
waits for the data from the writeback.
If the prefetch target is found in multiple upper level caches, specifically
in the tags or MSHRs of one upper level cache and the writeback buffer of
another, the snoop packet will return with both prefetchSquashed and
memInhibitAsserted set, while the current code is not written to handle such
an outcome. Current code checks for the prefetchSquashed flag first, if it
finds the flag, it deallocates the reserved MSHR. This leads to assert failure
when the data from the writeback appears at cache. In this fix, we simply
switch the order of checks. We first check for memInhibitAsserted and then for
prefetch squashed.
Previously, the user would have to manually set access_backing_store=True
on all RubyPorts (Sequencers) in the config files.
Now, instead there is one global option that each RubyPort checks on
initialization.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
In highly loaded cases, reads might actually overlap with writes to the
initial memory state. The mem checker needs to detect such cases and
permit the read reading either from the writes (what it is doing now) or
read from the initial, unknown value.
This patch adds this logic.
This patch ensures we can run simulations with very large simulated
memories (at least 64 TB based on some quick runs on a Linux
workstation). In essence this allows us to efficiently deal with
sparse address maps without having to implement a redirection layer in
the backing store.
This opens up for run-time errors if we eventually exhausts the hosts
memory and swap space, but this should hopefully never happen.
This patch changes the range cache used in the global physical memory
to be an iterator so that we can use it not only as part of isMemAddr,
but also access and functionalAccess. This matches use-cases where a
core is using the atomic non-caching memory mode, and repeatedly calls
isMemAddr and access.
Linux boot on aarch32, with a single atomic CPU, is now more than 30%
faster when using "--fastmem" compared to not using the direct memory
access.
This patch clarifies the packet timings annotated
when going through a crossbar.
The old 'firstWordDelay' is replaced by 'headerDelay' that represents
the delay associated to the delivery of the header of the packet.
The old 'lastWordDelay' is replaced by 'payloadDelay' that represents
the delay needed to processing the payload of the packet.
For now the uses and values remain identical. However, going forward
the payloadDelay will be additive, and not include the
headerDelay. Follow-on patches will make the headerDelay capture the
pipeline latency incurred in the crossbar, whereas the payloadDelay
will capture the additional serialisation delay.
This patch adds some much-needed clarity in the specification of the
cache timing. For now, hit_latency and response_latency are kept as
top-level parameters, but the cache itself has a number of local
variables to better map the individual timing variables to different
behaviours (and sub-components).
The introduced variables are:
- lookupLatency: latency of tag lookup, occuring on any access
- forwardLatency: latency that occurs in case of outbound miss
- fillLatency: latency to fill a cache block
We keep the existing responseLatency
The forwardLatency is used by allocateInternalBuffer() for:
- MSHR allocateWriteBuffer (unchached write forwarded to WriteBuffer);
- MSHR allocateMissBuffer (cacheable miss in MSHR queue);
- MSHR allocateUncachedReadBuffer (unchached read allocated in MSHR
queue)
It is our assumption that the time for the above three buffers is the
same. Similarly, for snoop responses passing through the cache we use
forwardLatency.
This patch adds a bit of clarification around the assumptions made in
the cache when packets are sent out, and dirty responses are
pending. As part of the change, the marking of an MSHR as in service
is simplified slightly, and comments are added to explain what
assumptions are made.
This patch changes the DRAM channel interleaving default behaviour to
be more representative. The default address mapping (RoRaBaCoCh) moves
the channel bits towards the least significant bits, and uses 128 byte
as the default channel interleaving granularity.
These defaults can be overridden if desired, but should serve as a
sensible starting point for most use-cases.
This patch takes the final step in removing the src and dest fields in
the packet. These fields were rather confusing in that they only
remember a single multiplexing component, and pushed the
responsibility to the bridge and caches to store the fields in a
senderstate, thus effectively creating a stack. With the recent
changes to the crossbar response routing the crossbar is now
responsible without relying on the packet fields. Thus, these
variables are now unused and can be removed.
This patch removes the source field from the ForwardResponseRecord,
but keeps the class as it is part of how the cache identifies
responses to hardware prefetches that are snooped upwards.
This patch aligns how the response routing is done in the RubyPort,
using the SenderState for both memory and I/O accesses. Before this
patch, only the I/O used the SenderState, whereas the memory accesses
relied on the src field in the packet. With this patch we shift to
using SenderState in both cases, thus not relying on the src field any
longer.
This patch removes the need for a source and destination field in the
packet by shifting the onus of the tracking to the crossbar, much like
a real implementation. This change in behaviour also means we no
longer need a SenderState to remember the source/dest when ever we
have multiple crossbars in the system. Thus, the stack that was
created by the SenderState is not needed, and each crossbar locally
tracks the response routing.
The fields in the packet are still left behind as the RubyPort (which
also acts as a crossbar) does routing based on them. In the succeeding
patches the uses of the src and dest field will be removed. Combined,
these patches improve the simulation performance by roughly 2%.
This patch tidies up how we create and set the fields of a Request. In
essence it tries to use the constructor where possible (as opposed to
setPhys and setVirt), thus avoiding spreading the information across a
number of locations. In fact, setPhys is made private as part of this
patch, and a number of places where we callede setVirt instead uses
the appropriate constructor.
This patch fixes a bug where the DRAM controller tried to access the
system cacheline size before the system pointer was initialised. It
also fixes a bug where the granularity is 0 (no interleaving).
The cache's MemSidePacketQueue schedules a sendEvent based upon
nextMSHRReadyTime() which is the time when the next MSHR is ready or whenever
a future prefetch is ready. However, a prefetch being ready does not guarentee
that it can obtain an MSHR. So, when all MSHRs are full,
the simulation ends up unnecessiciarly scheduling a sendEvent every picosecond
until an MSHR is finally freed and the prefetch can happen.
This patch fixes this by not signaling the prefetch ready time if the prefetch
could not be generated. The event is rescheduled as soon as a MSHR becomes
available.
Previously the code commented about an unhandled case where it might be
possible for a writeback to arrive after a prefetch was generated but
before it was sent to the memory system. I hit that case. Luckily
the prefetchSquash() logic already in the code handles dropping prefetch
request in certian circumstances.
Re-organizes the prefetcher class structure. Previously the
BasePrefetcher forced multiple assumptions on the prefetchers that
inherited from it. This patch makes the BasePrefetcher class truly
representative of base functionality. For example, the base class no
longer enforces FIFO order. Instead, prefetchers with FIFO requests
(like the existing stride and tagged prefetchers) now inherit from a
new QueuedPrefetcher base class.
Finally, the stride-based prefetcher now assumes a custimizable lookup table
(sets/ways) rather than the previous fully associative structure.
Adds a new parameter that reserves some number of MSHR entries for demand
accesses. This helps prevent prefetchers from taking all MSHRs, forcing demand
requests from the CPU to stall.
This patch gives the user direct influence over the number of DRAM
ranks to make it easier to tune the memory density without affecting
the bandwidth (previously the only means of scaling the device count
was through the number of channels).
The patch also adds some basic sanity checks to ensure that the number
of ranks is a power of two (since we rely on bit slices in the address
decoding).
This patch addresses an issue seen with the KVM CPU where the refresh
events scheduled by the DRAM controller forces the simulator to switch
out of the KVM mode, thus killing performance.
The current patch works around the fact that we currently have no
proper API to inform a SimObject of the mode switches. Instead we rely
on drainResume being called after any switch, and cache the previous
mode locally to be able to decide on appropriate actions.
The switcheroo regression require a minor stats bump as a result.
This patch adds rank-wise refresh to the controller, as opposed to the
channel-wide refresh currently in place. In essence each rank can be
refreshed independently, and for this to be possible the controller
is extended with a state machine per rank.
Without this patch the data bus is always idle during a refresh, as
all the ranks are refreshing at the same time. With the rank-wise
refresh it is possible to use one rank while another one is
refreshing, and thus the data bus can be kept busy.
The patch introduces a Rank class to encapsulate the state per rank,
and also shifts all the relevant banks, activation tracking etc to the
rank. The arbitration is also updated to consider the state of the rank.
This patch adds a stand-alone stack distance calculator. The stack
distance calculator is a passive SimObject that observes the addresses
passed to it. It calculates stack distances (LRU Distances) of
incoming addresses based on the partial sum hierarchy tree algorithm
described by Alamasi et al. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/773039.773043.
For each transaction a hashtable look-up is performed. At every
non-unique transaction the tree is traversed from the leaf at the
returned index to the root, the old node is deleted from the tree, and
the sums (to the right) are collected and decremented. The collected
sum represets the stack distance of the found node. At every unique
transaction the stack distance is returned as
numeric_limits<uint64>::max().
In addition to the basic stack distance calculation, a feature to mark
an old node in the tree is added. This is useful if it is required to
see the reuse pattern. For example, Writebacks to the lower level
(e.g. membus from L2), can be marked instead of being removed from the
stack (isMarked flag of Node set to True). And then later if this same
address is accessed (by L1), the value of the isMarked flag would be
True. This gives some insight on how the Writeback policy of the
lower level affect the read/write accesses in an application.
Debugging is enabled by setting the verify flag to true. Debugging is
implemented using a dummy stack that behaves in a naive way, using STL
vectors. Note that this has a large impact on run time.
This patch adds the MemChecker and MemCheckerMonitor classes. While
MemChecker can be integrated anywhere in the system and is independent,
the most convenient usage is through the MemCheckerMonitor -- this
however, puts limitations on where the MemChecker is able to observe
read/write transactions.
This patch takes a clean-slate approach to providing WriteInvalidate
(write streaming, full cache line writes without first reading)
support.
Unlike the prior attempt, which took an aggressive approach of directly
writing into the cache before handling the coherence actions, this
approach follows the existing cache flows as closely as possible.
This patch allows objects to get the src/dest of a packet even if it
is not set to a valid port id. This simplifies (ab)using the bridge as
a buffer and latency adapter in situations where the neighbouring
MemObjects are not crossbars.
The checks that were done in the packet are now shifted to the
crossbar where the fields are used to index into the port
arrays. Thus, the carrier of the information is not burdened with
checking, and the crossbar can check not only that the destination is
set, but also that the port index is within limits.
This patch attempts to make the rules for data allocation in the
packet explicit, understandable, and easy to verify. The constructor
that copies a packet is extended with an additional flag "alloc_data"
to enable the call site to explicitly say whether the newly created
packet is short-lived (a zero-time snoop), or has an unknown life-time
and therefore should allocate its own data (or copy a static pointer
in the case of static data).
The tricky case is the static data. In essence this is a
copy-avoidance scheme where the original source of the request (DMA,
CPU etc) does not ask the memory system to return data as part of the
packet, but instead provides a pointer, and then the memory system
carries this pointer around, and copies the appropriate data to the
location itself. Thus any derived packet actually never copies any
data. As the original source does not copy any data from the response
packet when arriving back at the source, we must maintain the copy of
the original pointer to not break the system. We might want to revisit
this one day and pay the price for a few extra memcpy invocations.
All in all this patch should make it easier to grok what is going on
in the memory system and how data is actually copied (or not).
This patch cleans up the use of hasData and checkFunctional in the
packet. The hasData function is unfortunately suggesting that it
checks if the packet has a valid data pointer, when it does in fact
only check if the specific packet type is specified to have a data
payload. The confusion led to a bug in checkFunctional. The latter
function is also tidied up to avoid name overloading.
This adds a basic level of sanity checking to the packet by ensuring
that a request is not modified once the packet is created. The only
issue that had to be worked around is the relaying of
software-prefetches in the cache. The specific situation is now solved
by first copying the request, and then creating a new packet
accordingly.
This patch tidies up the Request class, making all getters const. The
odd one out is incAccessDepth which is called by the memory system as
packets carry the request around. This is also const to enable the
packet to hold on to a const Request.
This patch simplifies how we deal with dynamically allocated data in
the packet, always assuming that it is array allocated, and hence
should be array deallocated (delete[] as opposed to delete). The only
uses of dataDynamic was in the Ruby testers.
The ARRAY_DATA flag in the packet is removed accordingly. No
defragmentation of the flags is done at this point, leaving a gap in
the bit masks.
As the last part the patch, it renames dataDynamicArray to dataDynamic.
This patch cleans up the packet memory allocation confusion. The data
is always allocated at the requesting side, when a packet is created
(or copied), and there is never a need for any device to allocate any
space if it is merely responding to a paket. This behaviour is in line
with how SystemC and TLM works as well, thus increasing
interoperability, and matching established conventions.
The redundant calls to Packet::allocate are removed, and the checks in
the function are tightened up to make sure data is only ever allocated
once. There are still some oddities in the packet copy constructor
where we copy the data pointer if it is static (without ownership),
and allocate new space if the data is dynamic (with ownership). The
latter is being worked on further in a follow-on patch.
This patch changes the various write functions in the port proxies
to use const pointers for all sources (similar to how memcpy works).
The one unfortunate aspect is the need for a const_cast in the packet,
to avoid having to juggle a const and a non-const data pointer. This
design decision can always be re-evaluated at a later stage.
This patch takes a first step in tightening up how we use the data
pointer in write packets. A const getter is added for the pointer
itself (getConstPtr), and a number of member functions are also made
const accordingly. In a range of places throughout the memory system
the new member is used.
The patch also removes the unused isReadWrite function.
This patch removes the parameter that enables bypassing the null check
in the Packet::getPtr method. A number of call sites assume the value
to be non-null.
The one odd case is the RubyTester, which issues zero-sized
prefetches(!), and despite being reads they had no valid data
pointer. This is now fixed, but the size oddity remains (unless anyone
object or has any good suggestions).
Finally, in the Ruby Sequencer, appropriate checks are made for flush
packets as they have no valid data pointer.
This patch adds a first cut GDDR5 config to accommodate the users
combining gem5 and GPUSim. The config is based on a SK Hynix
datasheet, and the Nvidia GTX580 specification. Someone from the
GPUSim user-camp should tweak the default page-policy and static
frontend and backend latencies.
This patch adds uncacheable/cacheable and read-only/read-write attributes to
the map method of PageTableBase. It also modifies the constructor of TlbEntry
structs for all architectures to consider the new attributes.
Ruby's functional accesses are not guaranteed to succeed as of now. While
this is not a problem for the protocols that are currently in the mainline
repo, it seems that coherence protocols for gpus rely on a backing store to
supply the correct data. The aim of this patch is to make this backing store
configurable i.e. it comes into play only when a particular option:
--access-backing-store is invoked.
The backing store has been there since M5 and GEMS were integrated. The only
difference is that earlier the system used to maintain the backing store and
ruby's copy was write-only. Sometime last year, we moved to data being
supplied supplied by ruby in SE mode simulations. And now we have patches on
the reviewboard, which remove ruby's copy of memory altogether and rely
completely on the system's memory to supply data. This patch adds back a
SimpleMemory member to RubySystem. This member is used only if the option:
access-backing-store is set to true. By default, the memory would not be
accessed.
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 function was added when I had incorrectly arrived at the conclusion
that such a function can improve the chances of a functional read succeeding.
As was later realized, this is not possible in the current setup. While the
code using this function was dropped long back, this function was not. Hence
the patch.
This patch removes the data block present in the directory entry structure
of each protocol in gem5's mainline. Firstly, this is required for moving
towards common set of memory controllers for classic and ruby memory systems.
Secondly, the data block was being misused in several places. It was being
used for having free access to the physical memory instead of calling on the
memory controller.
From now on, the directory controller will not have a direct visibility into
the physical memory. The Memory Vector object now resides in the
Memory Controller class. This also means that some significant changes are
being made to the functional accesses in ruby.
In my opinion, it creates needless complications in rest of the code.
Also, this structure hinders the move towards common set of code for
physical memory controllers.
Both ruby and the system used to maintain memory copies. With the changes
carried for programmed io accesses, only one single memory is required for
fs simulations. This patch sets the copy of memory that used to reside
with the system to null, so that no space is allocated, but address checks
can still be carried out. All the memory accesses now source and sink values
to the memory maintained by ruby.
As of now DMASequencer inherits from the RubyPort class. But the code in
RubyPort class is heavily tailored for the CPU Sequencer. There are parts of
the code that are not required at all for the DMA sequencer. Moreover, the
next patch uses the dma sequencer for carrying out memory accesses for all the
io devices. Hence, it is better to have a leaner dma sequencer.
WriteInvalidate semantics depend on the unconditional writeback
or they won't complete. Also, there's no point in deferring snoops
on their MSHRs, as they don't get new data at the end of their life
cycle the way other transactions do.
Add comment in the cache about a minor inefficiency re: WriteInvalidate.
Since WriteInvalidate directly writes into the cache, it can
create tricky timing interleavings with reads and writes to the
same cache line that haven't yet completed. This patch ensures
that these requests, when completed, don't overwrite the newer
data from the WriteInvalidate.
This patch adds the size of the DRAM device to the DRAM config. It
also compares the actual DRAM size (calculated using information from
the config) to the size defined in the system. If these two values do
not match gem5 will print a warning. In order to do correct DRAM
research the size of the memory defined in the system should match the
size of the DRAM in the config. The timing and current parameters
found in the DRAM configs are defined for a DRAM device with a
specific size and would differ for another device with a different
size.
This patch adds two MemoryObject's: ExternalMaster and ExternalSlave.
Each object has a single port which can be bound to an externally-
provided bridge to a port of another simulation system at
initialisation.
This patch transitions the Ruby Message and its derived classes from
the ad-hoc RefCountingPtr to the c++11 shared_ptr. There are no
changes in behaviour, and the code modifications are mainly replacing
"new" with "make_shared".
The cloning of derived messages is slightly changed as they previously
relied on overriding the base-class through covariant return types.
This patch makes the memory system ISA-agnostic by enabling the Ruby
Sequencer to dynamically determine if it has to do a store check. To
enable this check, the ISA is encoded as an enum, and the system
is able to provide the ISA to the Sequencer at run time.
--HG--
rename : src/arch/x86/insts/microldstop.hh => src/arch/x86/ldstflags.hh
This patch takes a step towards an ISA-agnostic memory
system by enabling the components to establish the page size after
instantiation. The swap operation in the memory is now also allowing
any granularity to avoid depending on the IntReg of the ISA.
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.
This patch takes the final step in integrating DRAMPower and adds the
appropriate calls in the DRAM controller to provide the command trace
and extract the power and energy stats. The debug printouts are still
left in place, but will eventually be removed.
At the moment the DRAM power calculation is always on when using the
DRAM controller model. The run-time impact of this addition is around
1.5% when looking at the total host seconds of the regressions. We
deem this a sensible trade-off to avoid the complication of adding an
enable/disable mechanism.
This patch adds a class to wrap DRAMPower Library in gem5.
This class initiates an object of class MemorySpecification
of the DRAMPower Library, passes the parameters from DRAMCtrl.py
to this object and creates an object of drampower library using
the memory specification.
This patch adds missing timing and current parameters to the existing
DRAM configs. These missing timing and current parameters are required
by DRAMPower for the DRAM power calculations. The missing values are
datasheet values of the specified DRAMs, and the appropriate
references are added for the variuos configs.
This patch prunes the DDR3 config that was initially created to match
the default config of DRAMSim2. The config is not complete as it is,
and to avoid having to maintain it, the easiest way forward is to
simply prune it. Going forward we are adding power number etc to the
other configurations.
This patch changes the name of the Bus classes to XBar to better
reflect the actual timing behaviour. The actual instances in the
config scripts are not renamed, and remain as e.g. iobus or membus.
As part of this renaming, the code has also been clean up slightly,
making use of range-based for loops and tidying up some comments. The
only changes outside the bus/crossbar code is due to the delay
variables in the packet.
--HG--
rename : src/mem/Bus.py => src/mem/XBar.py
rename : src/mem/coherent_bus.cc => src/mem/coherent_xbar.cc
rename : src/mem/coherent_bus.hh => src/mem/coherent_xbar.hh
rename : src/mem/noncoherent_bus.cc => src/mem/noncoherent_xbar.cc
rename : src/mem/noncoherent_bus.hh => src/mem/noncoherent_xbar.hh
rename : src/mem/bus.cc => src/mem/xbar.cc
rename : src/mem/bus.hh => src/mem/xbar.hh
Adds a simple access counter for requests and snoops for the snoop filter and
also classifies hits based on whether a single other holder existed or whether
multiple shares held the line.
This patch adds a simple counter for both total messages and a histogram for
the fan-out of snoop messages. The fan-out describes to how many ports snoops
had to be sent per incoming request / snoop-from-below. Without any
cleverness, this usually means to either all, or all but the requesting port.
This is a first cut at a simple snoop filter that tracks presence of lines in
the caches "above" it. The snoop filter can be applied at any given cache
hierarchy and will then handle the caches above it appropriately; there is no
need to use this only in the last-level bus.
This design currently has some limitations: missing stats, no notion of clean
evictions (these will not update the underlying snoop filter, because they are
not sent from the evicting cache down), no notion of capacity for the snoop
filter and thus no need for invalidations caused by capacity pressure in the
snoop filter. These are planned to be added on top with future change sets.
Added the following parameter to the DRAMCtrl class:
- bank_groups_per_rank
This defaults to 1. For the DDR4 case, the default is overridden to indicate
bank group architecture, with multiple bank groups per rank.
Added the following delays to the DRAMCtrl class:
- tCCD_L : CAS-to-CAS, same bank group delay
- tRRD_L : RAS-to-RAS, same bank group delay
These parameters are only applied when bank group timing is enabled. Bank
group timing is currently enabled only for DDR4 memories.
For all other memories, these delays will default to '0 ns'
In the DRAM controller model, applied the bank group timing to the per bank
parameters actAllowedAt and colAllowedAt.
The actAllowedAt will be updated based on bank group when an ACT is issued.
The colAllowedAt will be updated based on bank group when a RD/WR burst is
issued.
At the moment no modifications are made to the scheduling.
Add the following delay to the DRAM controller:
- tCS : Different rank bus turnaround delay
This will be applied for
1) read-to-read,
2) write-to-write,
3) write-to-read, and
4) read-to-write
command sequences, where the new command accesses a different rank
than the previous burst.
The delay defaults to 2*tCK for each defined memory class. Note that
this does not correspond to one particular timing constraint, but is a
way of modelling all the associated constraints.
The DRAM controller has some minor changes to prioritize commands to
the same rank. This prioritization will only occur when the command
stream is not switching from a read to write or vice versa (in the
case of switching we have a gap in any case).
To prioritize commands to the same rank, the model will determine if there are
any commands queued (same type) to the same rank as the previous command.
This check will ensure that the 'same rank' command will be able to execute
without adding bubbles to the command flow, e.g. any ACT delay requirements
can be done under the hoods, allowing the burst to issue seamlessly.
There are two primary issues with this code which make it deserving of deletion.
1) GHB is a way to structure a prefetcher, not a definitive type of prefetcher
2) This prefetcher isn't even structured like a GHB prefetcher.
It's basically a worse version of the stride prefetcher.
It primarily serves to confuse new gem5 users and most functionality is already
present in the stride prefetcher.
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.
Static analysis unearther a bunch of uninitialised variables and
members, and this patch addresses the problem. In all cases these
omissions seem benign in the end, but at least fixing them means less
false positives next time round.
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 removes unecessary retries that happened when the bus layer
itself was no longer busy, but the the peer was not yet ready. Instead
of sending a retry that will inevitably not succeed, the bus now
silenty waits until the peer sends a retry.
Support full-block writes directly rather than requiring RMW:
* a cache line is allocated in the cache upon receipt of a
WriteInvalidateReq, not the WriteInvalidateResp.
* only top-level caches allocate the line; the others just pass
the request along and invalidate as necessary.
* to close a timing window between the *Req and the *Resp, a new
metadata bit tracks whether another cache has read a copy of
the new line before the writeback to memory.
This patch fixes a bug in the cache port where the retry flag was
reset too early, allowing new requests to arrive before the retry was
actually sent, but with the event already scheduled. This caused a
deadlock in the interactions with the O3 LSQ.
The patche fixes the underlying issue by shifting the resetting of the
flag to be done by the event that also calls sendRetry(). The patch
also tidies up the flow control in recvTimingReq and ensures that we
also check if we already have a retry outstanding.
Previously, they were treated so much like loads that they could stall
at the head of the ROB. Now they are always treated like L1 hits.
If they actually miss, a new request is created at the L1 and tracked
from the MSHRs there if necessary (i.e. if it didn't coalesce with
an existing outstanding load).
If a set of LL/SC requests contend on the same cache block we
can get into a situation where CPUs will deadlock if they expect
a failed SC to supply them data. This case happens where 3 or
more cores are contending for a cache block using LL/SC and the system
is configured where 2 cores are connected to a local bus and the
third is connected to a remote bus. If a core on the local bus
sends an SCUpgrade and the core on the remote bus sends and SCUpgrade
they will race to see who will win the SC access. In the meantime
if the other core appends a read to one of the SCUpgrades it will expect
to be supplied data by that SCUpgrade transaction. If it happens that
the SCUpgrade that was picked to supply the data is failed, it will
drop the appended request for data and never respond, leaving the requesting
core to deadlock. This patch makes all SC's behave as normal stores to
prevent this case but still makes sure to check whether it can perform
the update.
This patch prunes unused values, and also unifies how the values are
defined (not using an enum for ALPHA), aligning the use of int vs Addr
etc.
The patch also removes the duplication of PageBytes/PageShift and
VMPageSize/LogVMPageSize. For all ISAs the two pairs had identical
values and the latter has been removed.
The Index type defined as typedef int64 does not really provide any help
since in most places we use primitive types instead of Index. Also, the name
Index is very generic that it does not merit being used as a typename.
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.
A later changeset changes the file src/python/swig/pyobject.cc to include
a header file that includes a header file generated at build time depending
on the PROTOCOL in use. Since NULL ISA was not specifying any protocol,
this resulted in compilation problems. Hence, the changeset.
The namespace Message conflicts with the Message data type used extensively
in Ruby. Since Ruby is being moved to the same Master/Slave ports based
configuration style as the rest of gem5, this conflict needs to be resolved.
Hence, the namespace is being renamed to ProtoMessage.
There are two changes this patch makes to the way configurable members of a
state machine are specified in SLICC. The first change is that the data
member declarations will need to be separated by a semi-colon instead of a
comma. Secondly, the default value to be assigned would now use SLICC's
assignment operator i.e. ':='.
This patch changes the grammar for SLICC so as to remove some of the
redundant / duplicate rules. In particular rules for object/variable
declaration and class member declaration have been unified. Similarly, the
rules for a general function and a class method have been unified.
One more change is in the priority of two rules. The first rule is on
declaring a function with all the params typed and named. The second rule is
on declaring a function with all the params only typed. Earlier the second
rule had a higher priority. Now the first rule has a higher priority.
This patch enables the use of page tables that are stored in system memory
and respect x86 specification, in SE mode. It defines an architectural
page table for x86 as a MultiLevelPageTable class and puts a placeholder
class for other ISAs page tables, giving the possibility for future
implementation.
This patch defines a multi-level page table class that stores the page table in
system memory, consistent with ISA specifications. In this way, cpu models that
use the actual hardware to execute (e.g. KvmCPU), are able to traverse the page
table.
This patch ensures the cycle check is still valid even restoring from
a checkpoint. In this case the DRAMSim2 cycle count is relative to the
startTick rather than 0.
This patch fixes a bug in the DRAM controller address decoding. In
cases where the DRAM burst size (e.g. 32 bytes in a rank with a single
LPDDR3 x32) was smaller than the channel interleaving size
(e.g. systems with a 64-byte cache line) one address bit effectively
got used as a channel bit when it should have been a low-order column
bit.
This patch adds a notion of "columns per stripe", and more clearly
deals with the low-order column bits and high-order column bits. The
patch also relaxes the granularity check such that it is possible to
use interleaving granularities other than the cache line size.
The patch also adds a missing M5_CLASS_VAR_USED to the tCK member as
it is only used in the debug build for now.
When a cacheline is written back to a lower-level cache,
tags->insertBlock() sets various status parameters. However these
status bits were cleared immediately after calling. This patch makes
it so that these status fields are not cleared by moving them outside
of the tags->insertBlock() call.
this patch implements a new tags class that uses a random replacement policy.
these tags prefer to evict invalid blocks first, if none are available a
replacement candidate is chosen at random.
this patch factors out the common code in the LRU class and creates a new
abstract class: the BaseSetAssoc class. any set associative tag class must
implement the functionality related to the actual replacement policy in the
following methods:
accessBlock()
findVictim()
insertBlock()
invalidate()
This patch adds a DRAMPower flag to enable off-line DRAM power
analysis using the DRAMPower tool. A new DRAMPower flag is added
and a follow-on patch adds a Python script to post-process the output
and order it based on time stamps.
The long-term goal is to link DRAMPower as a library and provide the
commands through function calls to the model rather than first
printing and then parsing the commands. At the moment it is also up to
the user to ensure that the same DRAM configuration is used by the
gem5 controller model and DRAMPower.
This patch adds the index of the bank and rank as a field so that we can
determine the identity of a given bank (reference or pointer) for the
power tracing. We also grab the opportunity of cleaning up the
arguments used for identifying the bank when activating.
Using '== true' in a boolean expression is totally redundant,
and using '== false' is pretty verbose (and arguably less
readable in most cases) compared to '!'.
It's somewhat of a pet peeve, perhaps, but I had some time
waiting for some tests to run and decided to clean these up.
Unfortunately, SLICC appears not to have the '!' operator,
so I had to leave the '== false' tests in the SLICC code.
This patch makes a more firm connection between the DDR3-1600
configuration and the corresponding datasheet, and also adds a
DDR3-2133 and a DDR4-2400 configuration. At the moment there is also
an ongoing effort to align the choice of datasheets to what is
available in DRAMPower.
This patch extends the current timing parameters with the DRAM cycle
time. This is needed as the DRAMPower tool expects timestamps in DRAM
cycles. At the moment we could get away with doing this in a
post-processing step as the DRAMPower execution is separate from the
simulation run. However, in the long run we want the tool to be called
during the simulation, and then the cycle time is needed.
This patch adds the basic ingredients for a precharge all operation,
to be used in conjunction with DRAM power modelling.
Currently we do not try and apply any cleverness when precharging all
banks, thus even if only a single bank is open we use PREA as opposed
to PRE. At the moment we only have a single tRP (tRPpb), and do not
model the slightly longer all-bank precharge constraint (tRPab).
This patch adds the tRTP timing constraint, governing the minimum time
between a read command and a precharge. Default values are provided
for the existing DRAM types.
This patch merges the two control paths used to estimate the latency
and update the bank state. As a result of this merging the computation
is now in one place only, and should be easier to follow as it is all
done in absolute (rather than relative) time.
As part of this change, the scheduling is also refined to ensure that
we look at a sensible estimate of the bank ready time in choosing the
next request. The bank latency stat is removed as it ends up being
misleading when the DRAM access code gets evaluated ahead of time (due
to the eagerness of waking the model up for scheduling the next
request).
This patch adds the write recovery time to the DRAM timing
constraints, and changes the current tRASDoneAt to a more generic
preAllowedAt, capturing when a precharge is allowed to take place.
The part of the DRAM access code that accounts for the precharge and
activate constraints is updated accordingly.
This patch adds power states to the controller. These states and the
transitions can be used together with the Micron power model. As a
more elaborate use-case, the transitions can be used to drive the
DRAMPower tool.
At the moment, the power-down modes are not used, and this patch
simply serves to capture the idle, auto refresh and active modes. The
patch adds a third state machine that interacts with the refresh state
machine.
This patch adds a state machine for the refresh scheduling to
ensure that no accesses are allowed while the refresh is in progress,
and that all banks are propely precharged.
As part of this change, the precharging of banks of broken out into a
method of its own, making is similar to how activations are dealt
with. The idle accounting is also updated to ensure that the refresh
duration is not added to the time that the DRAM is in the idle state
with all banks precharged.
This patch changes the read/write event loop to use a single event
(nextReqEvent), along with a state variable, thus joining the two
control flows. This change makes it easier to follow the state
transitions, and control what happens when.
With the new loop we modify the overly conservative switching times
such that the write-to-read switch allows bank preparation to happen
in parallel with the bus turn around. Similarly, the read-to-write
switch uses the introduced tRTW constraint.
This patch squashes prefetch requests from downstream caches,
so that they do not steal cachelines away from caches closer
to the cpu. It was originally coded by Mitch Hayenga and
modified by Aasheesh Kolli.
Splits the CommMonitor trace_file parameter into three parameters. Previously,
the trace was only enabled if the trace_file parameter was set, and would be
written to this file. This patch adds in a trace_enable and trace_compress
parameter to the CommMonitor.
No trace is generated if trace_enable is set to False. If it is set to True, the
trace is written to a file based on the name of the SimObject in the simulation
hierarchy. For example, system.cluster.il1_commmonitor.trc. This filename can be
overridden by additionally specifying a file name to the trace_file parameter
(more on this later).
The trace_compress parameter will append .gz to any filename if set to True.
This enables compression of the generated traces. If the file name already ends
in .gz, then no changes are made.
The trace_file parameter will override the name set by the trace_enable
parameter. In the case that the specified name does not end in .gz but
trace_compress is set to true, .gz is appended to the supplied file name.
This never actually worked since it was printing out only a word
of the cache block and not the entire thing and doubly didn't work
csprintf overrides the %#x specifier and assumes a char* array is
actually a string.
Upon aggregating records, serialize system's cache-block size, as the
cache-block size can be different when restoring from a checkpoint. This way,
we can correctly read all records when restoring from a checkpoints, even if
the cache-block size is different.
Note, that it is only possible to restore from a checkpoint if the
desired cache-block size is smaller or equal to the cache-block size
when the checkpoint was taken; we can split one larger request into
multiple small ones, but it is not reliable to do the opposite.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
As of now, the enqueue statement can take in any number of 'pairs' as
argument. But we only use the pair in which latency is the key. This
latency is allowed to be either a fixed integer or a member variable of
controller in which the expression appears. This patch drops the use of pairs
in an enqueue statement. Instead, an expression is allowed which will be
interpreted to be the latency of the enqueue. This expression can anything
allowed by slicc including a constant integer or a member variable.
This patch adds stats for tracking the number of reads/writes per bus
turn around, and also adds hysteresis to the write-to-read switching
to ensure that the queue does not oscilate around the low threshold.
This patch renames the not-so-simple SimpleDRAM to a more suitable
DRAMCtrl. The name change is intended to ensure that we do not send
the wrong message (although the "simple" in SimpleDRAM was originally
intended as in cleverly simple, or elegant).
As the DRAM controller modelling work is being presented at ISPASS'14
our hope is that a broader audience will use the model in the future.
--HG--
rename : src/mem/SimpleDRAM.py => src/mem/DRAMCtrl.py
rename : src/mem/simple_dram.cc => src/mem/dram_ctrl.cc
rename : src/mem/simple_dram.hh => src/mem/dram_ctrl.hh
Make the default memory type DDR3-1600 x64, and use the open-adaptive
page policy. This change is aiming to ensure that users by default are
using a realistic memory system.
This patch adds a basic starvation-prevention mechanism where a DRAM
page is forced to close after a certain number of accesses. The limit
is combined with the open and open-adaptive page policy and if reached
causes an auto-precharge.
This patch changes the triggering condition for the write draining
such that we grab the opportunity to issue writes if there are no
reads waiting (as opposed to waiting for the writes to reach the high
threshold). As a result, we potentially drain some of the writes in read
idle periods (if any).
A low threshold is added to be able to control how many write bursts
are kept in the memory controller queue (acting as on-chip storage).
The high and low thresholds are updated to sensible values for a 32/64
size write buffer. Note that the thresholds should be adjusted along
with the queue sizes.
This patch also adds some basic initialisation sanity checks and moves
part of the initialisation to the constructor.
This patch adds the row bits to the name of the address mapping
schemes to make it more clear that all the current schemes places the
row bits as the most significant bits.
This patch moves the Ruby-related debug flags to the ruby
sub-directory, and also removes the state SConsopts that add the
no-longer-used NO_VECTOR_BOUNDS_CHECK.
Each consumer object maintains a set of tick values when the object is supposed
to wakeup and do some processing. As of now, the object accesses this set both
when scheduling a wakeup event and when the object actually wakes up. The set
is accessed during wakeup to remove the current tick value from the set. This
functionality is now being moved to the scheduling function where ticks are
removed at a later time.
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.
Piobus was recently added to se scripts for ruby so that the interrupt
controller can be connected to something (required since the interrupt
controller sends address range messages). This patch removes the piobus
and instead, the pio port of ruby port will now ignore the range change
messages in se mode.
This patch fixes an assert condition that is not true at all
times. There are valid situations that arise in dual-core
dual-workload runs where the assert condition is false. The function
call following the assert however needs to be called only when the
condition is true (a block cannot be invalidated in the tags structure
if has not been allocated in the structure, and the tempBlock is never
allocated). Hence the 'assert' has been replaced with an 'if'.
