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 adds a predecessor field to the SenderState base class to
make the process of linking them up more uniform, and enable a
traversal of the stack without knowing the specific type of the
subclasses.
There are a number of simplifications done as part of changing the
SenderState, particularly in the RubyTest.
This patch moves send/recvTiming and send/recvTimingSnoop from the
Port base class to the MasterPort and SlavePort, and also splits them
into separate member functions for requests and responses:
send/recvTimingReq, send/recvTimingResp, and send/recvTimingSnoopReq,
send/recvTimingSnoopResp. A master port sends requests and receives
responses, and also receives snoop requests and sends snoop
responses. A slave port has the reciprocal behaviour as it receives
requests and sends responses, and sends snoop requests and receives
snoop responses.
For all MemObjects that have only master ports or slave ports (but not
both), e.g. a CPU, or a PIO device, this patch merely adds more
clarity to what kind of access is taking place. For example, a CPU
port used to call sendTiming, and will now call
sendTimingReq. Similarly, a response previously came back through
recvTiming, which is now recvTimingResp. For the modules that have
both master and slave ports, e.g. the bus, the behaviour was
previously relying on branches based on pkt->isRequest(), and this is
now replaced with a direct call to the apprioriate member function
depending on the type of access. Please note that send/recvRetry is
still shared by all the timing accessors and remains in the Port base
class for now (to maintain the current bus functionality and avoid
changing the statistics of all regressions).
The packet queue is split into a MasterPort and SlavePort version to
facilitate the use of the new timing accessors. All uses of the
PacketQueue are updated accordingly.
With this patch, the type of packet (request or response) is now well
defined for each type of access, and asserts on pkt->isRequest() and
pkt->isResponse() are now moved to the appropriate send member
functions. It is also worth noting that sendTimingSnoopReq no longer
returns a boolean, as the semantics do not alow snoop requests to be
rejected or stalled. All these assumptions are now excplicitly part of
the port interface itself.
This patch simplifies future patches by changing the pointer type used
in a number of the Ruby testers to use MasterPort instead of using a
derived CpuPort class. There is no reason for using the more
specialised pointers, and there is no longer a need to do any casting.
With the latest changes to the tester, organising ports as readers and
writes, things got a bit more complicated, and the "type" now had to
be removed to be able to fall back to using MasterPort rather than
CpuPort.
This patch simplifies the packet by removing the broadcast flag and
instead more firmly relying on (and enforcing) the semantics of
transactions in the classic memory system, i.e. request packets are
routed from a master to a slave based on the address, and when they
are created they have neither a valid source, nor destination. On
their way to the slave, the request packet is updated with a source
field for all modules that multiplex packets from multiple master
(e.g. a bus). When a request packet is turned into a response packet
(at the final slave), it moves the potentially populated source field
to the destination field, and the response packet is routed through
any multiplexing components back to the master based on the
destination field.
Modules that connect multiplexing components, such as caches and
bridges store any existing source and destination field in the sender
state as a stack (just as before).
The packet constructor is simplified in that there is no longer a need
to pass the Packet::Broadcast as the destination (this was always the
case for the classic memory system). In the case of Ruby, rather than
using the parameter to the constructor we now rely on setDest, as
there is already another three-argument constructor in the packet
class.
In many places where the packet information was printed as part of
DPRINTFs, request packets would be printed with a numeric "dest" that
would always be -1 (Broadcast) and that field is now removed from the
printing.
This change adds a master id to each request object which can be
used identify every device in the system that is capable of issuing a request.
This is part of the way to removing the numCpus+1 stats in the cache and
replacing them with the master ids. This is one of a series of changes
that make way for the stats output to be changed to python.
At the same time, rename the trace flags to debug flags since they
have broader usage than simply tracing. This means that
--trace-flags is now --debug-flags and --trace-help is now --debug-help
