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.
The changeset ad9c042dce54 made changes to the structures under the network
directory to use a map of buffers instead of vector of buffers.
The reasoning was that not all vnets that are created are used and we
needlessly allocate more buffers than required and then iterate over them
while processing network messages. But the move to map resulted in a slow
down which was pointed out by Andreas Hansson. This patch moves things
back to using vector of message buffers.
This patch 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.
The previous changeset (9863:9483739f83ee) used STL vector containers to
dynamically allocate stats in the Ruby SimpleNetwork, Switch and Throttle. For
gcc versions before at least 4.6.3, this causes the standard vector allocator
to call Stats copy constructors (a no-no, since stats should be allocated in
the body of each SimObject instance). Since the size of these stats arrays is
known at compile time (NOTE: after code generation), this patch changes their
allocation to be static rather than using an STL vector.
The patch started of with replacing Time with Cycles in the Consumer class.
But to get ruby to compile, the rest of the changes had to be carried out.
Subsequent patches will further this process, till we completely replace
Time with Cycles.
This patch addresses a warning related to the swig interface
generation for the Switch class. The cxx_header is now specified
correctly, and the header in question has got a few includes added to
make it all compile.
This patch adds support to different entities in the ruby memory system
for more reliable functional read/write accesses. Only the simple network
has been augmented as of now. Later on Garnet will also support functional
accesses.
The patch adds functional access code to all the different types of messages
that protocols can send around. These messages are functionally accessed
by going through the buffers maintained by the network entities.
The patch also rectifies some of the bugs found in coherence protocols while
testing the patch.
With this patch applied, functional writes always succeed. But functional
reads can still fail.
This patch removes the use of g_system_ptr for event scheduling. Each consumer
object now needs to specify upfront an EventManager object it would use for
scheduling events. This makes the ruby memory system more amenable for a
multi-threaded simulation.
This patch removes printConfig() functions from all structures in Ruby.
Most of the information is already part of config.ini, and where ever it
is not, it would become in due course.
Moved the buffer_size, endpoint_bandwidth, and adaptive_routing params out of
the top-level parent network object and to only those networks that actually
use those parameters.
This was done with an automated process, so there could be things that were
done in this tree in the past that didn't make it. One known regression
is that atomic memory operations do not seem to work properly anymore.
This basically means changing all #include statements and changing
autogenerated code so that it generates the correct paths. Because
slicc generates #includes, I had to hard code the include paths to
mem/protocol.
