Decode: Pull instruction decoding out of the StaticInst class into its own.

This change pulls the instruction decoding machinery (including caches) out of
the StaticInst class and puts it into its own class. This has a few intrinsic
benefits. First, the StaticInst code, which has gotten to be quite large, gets
simpler. Second, the code that handles decode caching is now separated out
into its own component and can be looked at in isolation, making it easier to
understand. I took the opportunity to restructure the code a bit which will
hopefully also help.

Beyond that, this change also lays some ground work for each ISA to have its
own, potentially stateful decode object. We'd be able to include less
contextualizing information in the ExtMachInst objects since that context
would be applied at the decoder. Also, the decoder could "know" ahead of time
that all the instructions it's going to see are going to be, for instance, 64
bit mode, and it will have one less thing to check when it decodes them.
Because the decode caching mechanism has been separated out, it's now possible
to have multiple caches which correspond to different types of decoding
context. Having one cache for each element of the cross product of different
configurations may become prohibitive, so it may be desirable to clear out the
cache when relatively static state changes and not to have one for each
setting.

Because the decode function is no longer universally accessible as a static
member of the StaticInst class, a new function was added to the ThreadContexts
that returns the applicable decode object.

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/cpu/thread_context.hh b/src/cpu/thread_context.hh
index 0f7228f0c..3b7f8b3c3 100644
--- a/src/cpu/thread_context.hh
+++ b/src/cpu/thread_context.hh
@@ -48,6 +48,7 @@ namespace TheISA
 }
 class BaseCPU;
 class Checkpoint;
+class Decoder;
 class EndQuiesceEvent;
 class TranslatingPort;
 class FunctionalPort;
@@ -120,6 +121,8 @@ class ThreadContext
 
     virtual TheISA::TLB *getDTBPtr() = 0;
 
+    virtual Decoder *getDecoderPtr() = 0;
+
     virtual System *getSystemPtr() = 0;
 
 #if FULL_SYSTEM
@@ -287,6 +290,8 @@ class ProxyThreadContext : public ThreadContext
 
     TheISA::TLB *getDTBPtr() { return actualTC->getDTBPtr(); }
 
+    Decoder *getDecoderPtr() { return actualTC->getDecoderPtr(); }
+
     System *getSystemPtr() { return actualTC->getSystemPtr(); }
 
 #if FULL_SYSTEM