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This changeset adds functionality that allows system calls to retry without
affecting thread context state such as the program counter or register values
for the associated thread context (when system calls return with a retry
fault).
This functionality is needed to solve problems with blocking system calls
in multi-process or multi-threaded simulations where information is passed
between processes/threads. Blocking system calls can cause deadlock because
the simulator itself is single threaded. There is only a single thread
servicing the event queue which can cause deadlock if the thread hits a
blocking system call instruction.
To illustrate the problem, consider two processes using the producer/consumer
sharing model. The processes can use file descriptors and the read and write
calls to pass information to one another. If the consumer calls the blocking
read system call before the producer has produced anything, the call will
block the event queue (while executing the system call instruction) and
deadlock the simulation.
The solution implemented in this changeset is to recognize that the system
calls will block and then generate a special retry fault. The fault will
be sent back up through the function call chain until it is exposed to the
cpu model's pipeline where the fault becomes visible. The fault will trigger
the cpu model to replay the instruction at a future tick where the call has
a chance to succeed without actually going into a blocking state.
In subsequent patches, we recognize that a syscall will block by calling a
non-blocking poll (from inside the system call implementation) and checking
for events. When events show up during the poll, it signifies that the call
would not have blocked and the syscall is allowed to proceed (calling an
underlying host system call if necessary). If no events are returned from the
poll, we generate the fault and try the instruction for the thread context
at a distant tick. Note that retrying every tick is not efficient.
As an aside, the simulator has some multi-threading support for the event
queue, but it is not used by default and needs work. Even if the event queue
was completely multi-threaded, meaning that there is a hardware thread on
the host servicing a single simulator thread contexts with a 1:1 mapping
between them, it's still possible to run into deadlock due to the event queue
barriers on quantum boundaries. The solution of replaying at a later tick
is the simplest solution and solves the problem generally.
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This patch adds probe points in Fetch, IEW, Rename and Commit stages as follows.
A probe point is added in the Fetch stage for probing when a fetch request is
sent. Notify is fired on the probe point when a request is sent succesfully in
the first attempt as well as on a retry attempt.
Probe points are added in the IEW stage when an instruction begins to execute
and when execution is complete. This points can be used for monitoring the
execution time of an instruction.
Probe points are added in the Rename stage to probe renaming of source and
destination registers and when there is squashing. These probe points can be
used to track register dependencies and remove when there is squashing.
A probe point for squashing is added in Commit to probe squashed instructions.
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The Request::UNCACHEABLE flag currently has two different
functions. The first, and obvious, function is to prevent the memory
system from caching data in the request. The second function is to
prevent reordering and speculation in CPU models.
This changeset gives the order/speculation requirement a separate flag
(Request::STRICT_ORDER). This flag prevents CPU models from doing the
following optimizations:
* Speculation: CPU models are not allowed to issue speculative
loads.
* Write combining: CPU models and caches are not allowed to merge
writes to the same cache line.
Note: The memory system may still reorder accesses unless the
UNCACHEABLE flag is set. It is therefore expected that the
STRICT_ORDER flag is combined with the UNCACHEABLE flag to prevent
this behavior.
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The variable is used in only one place and a whole new function setNextStatus()
has been defined just to compute the value of the variable. Instead of calling
the function, the value is now computed in the loop that preceded the function
call.
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Only the instruction address is actually checked, so there's no need to check
repeatedly while we're working through the microops of a macroop and that's
not changing.
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For X86, the o3 CPU would get stuck with the commit stage not being
drained if an interrupt arrived while drain was pending. isDrained()
makes sure that pcState.microPC() == 0, thus ensuring that we are at
an instruction boundary. However, when we take an interrupt we
execute:
pcState.upc(romMicroPC(entry));
pcState.nupc(romMicroPC(entry) + 1);
tc->pcState(pcState);
As a result, the MicroPC is no longer zero. This patch ensures the drain is
delayed until no interrupts are present. Once draining, non-synchronous
interrupts are deffered until after the switch.
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The o3 cpu could attempt to schedule inactive threads under round-robin SMT
mode.
This is because it maintained an independent priority list of threads from the
active thread list. This priority list could be come stale once threads were
inactive, leading to the cpu trying to fetch/commit from inactive threads.
Additionally the fetch queue is now forcibly flushed of instrctuctions
from the de-scheduled thread.
Relevant output:
24557000: system.cpu: [tid:1]: Calling deactivate thread.
24557000: system.cpu: [tid:1]: Removing from active threads list
24557500: system.cpu:
FullO3CPU: Ticking main, FullO3CPU.
24557500: system.cpu.fetch: Running stage.
24557500: system.cpu.fetch: Attempting to fetch from [tid:1]
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The o3 pipeline interlock/stall logic is incorrect. o3 unnecessicarily stalled
fetch and decode due to later stages in the pipeline. In general, a stage
should usually only consider if it is stalled by the adjacent, downstream stage.
Forcing stalls due to later stages creates and results in bubbles in the
pipeline. Additionally, o3 stalled the entire frontend (fetch, decode, rename)
on a branch mispredict while the ROB is being serially walked to update the
RAT (robSquashing). Only should have stalled at rename.
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Using '== true' in a boolean expression is totally redundant,
and using '== false' is pretty verbose (and arguably less
readable in most cases) compared to '!'.
It's somewhat of a pet peeve, perhaps, but I had some time
waiting for some tests to run and decided to clean these up.
Unfortunately, SLICC appears not to have the '!' operator,
so I had to leave the '== false' tests in the SLICC code.
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For the o3, add instruction mix (OpClass) histogram at commit (stats
also already collected at issue). For the simple CPUs we add a
histogram of executed instructions
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O3CPU has a compile-time maximum width set in o3/impl.hh, but checking
the configuration against this limit was not implemented anywhere
except for fetch. Configuring a wider pipe than the limit can silently
cause various issues during the simulation. This patch adds the proper
checking in the constructor of the various pipeline stages.
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A number of calls to isEmpty() and numFreeEntries()
should be thread-specific.
In cpu.cc, the fact that tid is /*commented*/ out is a bug. Say the rob
has instructions from thread 0 (isEmpty() returns false), and none from
thread 1. If we are trying to squash all of thread 1, then
readTailInst(thread 1) will be called because rob->isEmpty() returns
false. The result is end_it is not in the list and the while
statement loops indefinitely back over the cpu's instList.
In iew_impl.hh, all threads are told they have the entire remaining IQ, when
each thread actually has a certain allocation. The result is extra stalls at
the iew dispatch stage which the rename stage usually takes care of.
In commit_impl.hh, rob->readHeadInst(thread 1) can be called if the rob only
contains instructions from thread 0. This returns a dummyInst (which may work
since we are trying to squash all instructions, but hardly seems like the right
way to do it).
In rob_impl.hh this fix skips the rest of the function more frequently and is
more efficient.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
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The CheckerCPU model in pre-v8 code was not checking the
updates to miscellaneous registers due to some methods
for setting misc regs were not instrumented. The v8 patches
exposed this by calling the instrumented misc reg update
methods and then invoking the checker before the main CPU had
updated its misc regs, leading to false positives about
register mismatches. This patch fixes the non-instrumented
misc reg update methods and places calls to the checker in
the proper places in the O3 model.
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The probe patch is motivated by the desire to move analytical and trace code
away from functional code. This is achieved by the probe interface which is
essentially a glorified observer model.
What this means to users:
* add a probe point and a "notify" call at the source of an "event"
* add an isolated module, that is being used to carry out *your* analysis (e.g. generate a trace)
* register that module as a probe listener
Note: an example is given for reference in src/cpu/o3/simple_trace.[hh|cc] and src/cpu/SimpleTrace.py
What is happening under the hood:
* every SimObject maintains has a ProbeManager.
* during initialization (src/python/m5/simulate.py) first regProbePoints and
the regProbeListeners is called on each SimObject. this hooks up the probe
point notify calls with the listeners.
FAQs:
Why did you develop probe points:
* to remove trace, stats gathering, analytical code out of the functional code.
* the belief that probes could be generically useful.
What is a probe point:
* a probe point is used to notify upon a given event (e.g. cpu commits an instruction)
What is a probe listener:
* a class that handles whatever the user wishes to do when they are notified
about an event.
What can be passed on notify:
* probe points are templates, and so the user can generate probes that pass any
type of argument (by const reference) to a listener.
What relationships can be generated (1:1, 1:N, N:M etc):
* there isn't a restriction. You can hook probe points and listeners up in a
1:1, 1:N, N:M relationship. They become useful when a number of modules
listen to the same probe points. The idea being that you can add a small
number of probes into the source code and develop a larger number of useful
analysis modules that use information passed by the probes.
Can you give examples:
* adding a probe point to the cpu's commit method allows you to build a trace
module (outputting assembler), you could re-use this to gather instruction
distribution (arithmetic, load/store, conditional, control flow) stats.
Why is the probe interface currently restricted to passing a const reference:
* the desire, initially at least, is to allow an interface to observe
functionality, but not to change functionality.
* of course this can be subverted by const-casting.
What is the performance impact of adding probes:
* when nothing is actively listening to the probes they should have a
relatively minor impact. Profiling has suggested even with a large number of
probes (60) the impact of them (when not active) is very minimal (<1%).
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Fix a problem in the O3 CPU for instructions that are both
memory loads and memory barriers (e.g. load acquire) and
to uncacheable memory. This combination can confuse the
commit stage into commitng an instruction that hasn't
executed and got it's value yet. At the same time refactor
the code slightly to remove duplication between two of
the cases.
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Currently the commit stage keeps a local copy of the interrupt object.
Since the interrupt is usually handled several cycles after the commit
stage becomes aware of it, it is possible that the local copy of the
interrupt object may not be the interrupt that is actually handled.
It is possible that another interrupt occurred in the
interval between interrupt detection and interrupt handling.
This patch creates a copy of the interrupt just before the interrupt
is handled. The local copy is ignored.
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Fixes the tick used from rename:
- previously this gathered the tick on leaving rename which was always 1 less
than the dispatch. This conflated the decode ticks when back pressure built
in the pipeline.
- now picks up tick on entry.
Added --store_completions flag:
- will additionally display the store completion tail in the viewer.
- this highlights periods when large numbers of stores are outstanding (>16 LSQ
blocking)
Allows selection by tick range (previously this caused an infinite loop)
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While the majority of compilers seemed to pickup set from else where,
one version of gcc 4.7 complains, so explictly add it.
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Check if an instruction just enabled interrupts and we've previously had an
interrupt pending that was not handled because interrupts were subsequently
disabled before the pipeline reached a place to handle the interrupt. In that
case squash now to make sure the interrupt is handled.
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Previously, the O3 CPU could stop in the middle of a microcode
sequence. This patch makes sure that the pipeline stops when it has
committed a normal instruction or exited from a microcode
sequence. Additionally, it makes sure that the pipeline has no
instructions in flight when it is drained, which should make draining
more robust.
Draining is controlled in the commit stage, which checks if the next
PC after a committed instruction is in microcode. If this isn't the
case, it requests a squash of all instructions after that the
instruction that just committed and immediately signals a drain stall
to the fetch stage. The CPU then continues to execute until the
pipeline and all associated buffers are empty.
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Commit can currently both commit and squash in the same cycle. This
confuses other stages since the signals coming from the commit stage
can only signal either a squash or a commit in a cycle. This changeset
changes the behavior of squashAfter so that it commits all
instructions, including the instruction that requested the squash, in
the first cycle and then starts to squash in the next cycle.
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The entire O3 pipeline used to be initialized from init(), which is
called before initState() or unserialize(). This causes the pipeline
to be initialized from an incorrect thread context. This doesn't
currently lead to correctness problems as instructions fetched from
the incorrect start PC will be squashed a few cycles after
initialization.
This patch will affect the regressions since the O3 CPU now issues its
first instruction fetch to the correct PC instead of 0x0.
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isSyscall was originally created because during handling of a syscall in SE
mode the threadcontext had to be updated. However, in many places this is used
in FS mode (e.g. fault handlers) and the name doesn't make much sense. The
boolean actually stops gem5 from squashing speculative and non-committed state
when a write to a threadcontext happens, so re-name the variable to something
more appropriate
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these stats are duplicates of insts/opsCommitted, cause
confusion, and are poorly named.
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This patch introduces the notion of a clock update function that aims
to avoid costly divisions when turning the current tick into a
cycle. Each clocked object advances a private (hidden) cycle member
and a tick member and uses these to implement functions for getting
the tick of the next cycle, or the tick of a cycle some time in the
future.
In the different modules using the clocks, changes are made to avoid
counting in ticks only to later translate to cycles. There are a few
oddities in how the O3 and inorder CPU count idle cycles, as seen by a
few locations where a cycle is subtracted in the calculation. This is
done such that the regression does not change any stats, but should be
revisited in a future patch.
Another, much needed, change that is not done as part of this patch is
to introduce a new typedef uint64_t Cycle to be able to at least hint
at the unit of the variables counting Ticks vs Cycles. This will be
done as a follow-up patch.
As an additional follow up, the thread context still uses ticks for
the book keeping of last activate and last suspend and this should
probably also be changed into cycles as well.
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DPRINTFs
This patch fixes some problems with the drain/switchout functionality
for the O3 cpu and for the ARM ISA and adds some useful debug print
statements.
This is an incremental fix as there are still a few bugs/mem leaks with the
switchout code. Particularly when switching from an O3CPU to a
TimingSimpleCPU. However, when switching from O3 to O3 cores with the ARM ISA
I haven't encountered any more assertion failures; now the kernel will
typically panic inside of simulation.
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DynInst is extremely large the hope is that this re-organization will put the
most used members close to each other.
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Eliminates dead code in the O3 and Ozone CPU models that counted
software prefetch instructions separately for the ALPHA ISA only.
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Enables the CheckerCPU to be selected at runtime with the --checker option
from the configs/example/fs.py and configs/example/se.py configuration
files. Also merges with the SE/FS changes.
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Change RAS to fix issues with predicated call/return instructions.
Handled all cases in the life of a predicated call and return instruction.
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1. Updates the Branch Predictor correctly to the state
just after a mispredicted branch, if a squash occurs.
2. If a BTB does not find an entry, the branch is predicted not taken.
The global history is modified to correctly reflect this prediction.
3. Local history is now updated at the fetch stage instead of
execute stage.
4. In the Update stage of the branch predictor the local predictors are
now correctly updated according to the state of local history during
fetch stage.
This patch also improves performance by as much as 17% on some benchmarks
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The condition for handling interrupts is to check whether or not the cpu's
instruction list is empty. As observed, this can lead to cases in which even
though the instruction list is empty, interrupts are handled when they should
not be. The condition is being strengthened so that interrupts get handled only
when the last committed microop did not had IsDelayedCommit set.
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This patch adds a function to the ROB that will get the squashing instruction
from the ROB's list of instructions. This squashing instruction is used for
figuring out the macroop from which the fetch stage should fetch the microops.
Further, a check has been added that if the instructions are to be fetched
from the cache maintained by the fetch stage, then the data in the cache should
be valid and the PC of the thread being fetched from is same as the address of
the cache block.
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Brings the CheckerCPU back to life to allow FS and SE checking of the
O3CPU. These changes have only been tested with the ARM ISA. Other
ISAs potentially require modification.
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Initialize flags via the Event constructor instead of calling
setFlags() in the body of the derived class's constructor. I
forget exactly why, but this made life easier when implementing
multi-queue support.
Also rename Event::getFlags() to isFlagSet() to better match
common usage, and get rid of some unused Event methods.
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SEV instructions were originally implemented to cause asynchronous squashes
via the generateTCSquash() function in the O3 pipeline when updating the
SEV_MAILBOX miscReg. This caused race conditions between CPUs in an MP system
that would lead to a pipeline either going inactive indefinitely or not being
able to commit squashed instructions. Fixed SEV instructions to behave like
interrupts and cause synchronous sqaushes inside the pipeline, eliminating
the race conditions. Also fixed up the semantics of the WFE instruction to
behave as documented in the ARMv7 ISA description to not sleep if SEV_MAILBOX=1
or unmasked interrupts are pending.
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Before this change, the commit stage would wait until the ROB and store queue
were empty before recognizing an interrupt. The fetch stage would stop
generating instructions at an appropriate point, so commit would then wait
until a valid time to interrupt the instruction stream. Instructions might be
in flight after fetch but not the in the ROB or store queue (in rename, for
instance), so this change makes commit wait until all in flight instructions
are finished.
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Implemented a pipeline activity viewer as a python script (util/o3-pipeview.py)
and modified O3 code base to support an extra trace flag (O3PipeView) for
generating traces to be used as inputs by the tool.
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