mem: Add clean evicts to improve snoop filter tracking

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.

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/mem/cache/prefetch/base.cc b/src/mem/cache/prefetch/base.cc
index 3ab2d76a6..de4eaca01 100644
--- a/src/mem/cache/prefetch/base.cc
+++ b/src/mem/cache/prefetch/base.cc
@@ -93,6 +93,7 @@ BasePrefetcher::observeAccess(const PacketPtr &pkt) const
     if (!fetch && read && !onRead) return false;
     if (!fetch && !read && !onWrite) return false;
     if (!fetch && !read && inv) return false;
+    if (pkt->cmd == MemCmd::CleanEvict) return false;
 
     if (onMiss) {
         return !inCache(addr, is_secure) &&