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 is the final in the series. The whole series and this patch in
particular were written with the aim of interfacing ruby's directory controller
with the memory controller in the classic memory system. This is being done
since ruby's memory controller has not being kept up to date with the changes
going on in DRAMs. Classic's memory controller is more up to date and
supports multiple different types of DRAM. This also brings classic and
ruby ever more close. The patch also changes ruby's memory controller to
expose the same interface.
This patch 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.
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 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.
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 as of now the final patch in the series of patches that replace
Time with Cycles.This patch further replaces Time with Cycles in Sequencer,
Profiler, different protocols and related entities.
Though Time has not been completely removed, the places where it is in use
seem benign as of now.
This patch was initiated so as to remove reference to g_system_ptr,
the pointer to Ruby System that is used for getting the current time.
That simple change actual requires changing a lot many things in slicc and
garnet. All these changes are related to how time is handled.
In most of the places, g_system_ptr has been replaced by another clock
object. The changes have been done under the assumption that all the
components in the memory system are on the same clock frequency, but the
actual clocks might be distributed.
This patch adds a prefetcher for the ruby memory system. The prefetcher
is based on a prefetcher implemented by others (well, I don't know
who wrote the original). The prefetcher does stride-based prefetching,
both unit and non-unit. It obseves the misses in the cache and trains on
these. After the training period is over, the prefetcher starts issuing
prefetch requests to the controller.
