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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.
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Finally took the plunge and made this apply to all ISAs, not just ARM.
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Mwait works as follows:
1. A cpu monitors an address of interest (monitor instruction)
2. A cpu calls mwait - this loads the cache line into that cpu's cache.
3. The cpu goes to sleep.
4. When another processor requests write permission for the line, it is
evicted from the sleeping cpu's cache. This eviction is forwarded to the
sleeping cpu, which then wakes up.
Committed by: Nilay Vaish <nilay@cs.wisc.edu>
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This patch optimises the passing of StaticInstPtr by avoiding copying
the reference-counting pointer. This avoids first incrementing and
then decrementing the reference-counting pointer.
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The call paths for de-scheduling a thread are halt() and suspend(), from
the thread context. There is no call to deallocateContext() in general,
though some CPUs chose to define it. This patch removes the function
from BaseCPU and the cores which do not require it.
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activate(), suspend(), and halt() used on thread contexts had an optional
delay parameter. However this parameter was often ignored. Also, when used,
the delay was seemily arbitrarily set to 0 or 1 cycle (no other delays were
ever specified). This patch removes the delay parameter and 'Events'
associated with them across all ISAs and cores. Unused activate logic
is also removed.
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This patch changes how faults are passed between methods in an attempt
to copy as few reference-counting pointer instances as possible. This
should avoid unecessary copies being created, contributing to the
increment/decrement of the reference counters.
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This patch removes the stat totalCommittedInsts. This variable was used for
recording the total number of instructions committed across all the threads
of a core. The instructions committed by each thread are recorded invidually.
The total would now be generated by summing these individual counts.
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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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Add a third register class for condition codes,
in parallel with the integer and FP classes.
No ISAs use the CC class at this point though.
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Restructured rename map and free list to clean up some
extraneous code and separate out common code that can
be reused across different register classes (int and fp
at this point). Both components now consist of a set
of Simple* objects that are stand-alone rename map &
free list for each class, plus a Unified* object that
presents a unified interface across all register
classes and then redirects accesses to the appropriate
Simple* object as needed.
Moved free list initialization to PhysRegFile to better
isolate knowledge of physical register index mappings
to that class (and remove the need to pass a number
of parameters to the free list constructor).
Causes a small change to these stats:
cpu.rename.int_rename_lookups
cpu.rename.fp_rename_lookups
because they are now categorized on a per-operand basis
rather than a per-instruction basis.
That is, an instruction with mixed fp/int/misc operand
types will have each operand categorized independently,
where previously the lookup was categorized based on
the instruction type.
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This patch changes the port in the CPU classes to use MasterPort
instead of the derived CpuPort. The functions of the CpuPort are now
distributed across the relevant subclasses. The port accessor
functions (getInstPort and getDataPort) now return a MasterPort
instead of a CpuPort. This simplifies creating derivative CPUs that do
not use the CpuPort.
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CPUs need to test that the memory system is in the right mode in two
places, when the CPU is initialized (unless it's switched out) and on
a drainResume(). This led to some code duplication in the CPU
models. This changeset introduces the verifyMemoryMode() method which
is called by BaseCPU::init() if the CPU isn't switched out. The
individual CPU models are responsible for calling this method when
resuming from a drain as this code is CPU model specific.
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Cleanup the serialization code for the simple CPUs and the O3 CPU. The
CPU-specific code has been replaced with a (un)serializeThread that
serializes the thread state / context of a specific thread. Assuming
that the thread state class uses the CPU-specific thread state uses
the base thread state serialization code, this allows us to restore a
checkpoint with any of the CPU models.
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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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The defer_registration parameter is used to prevent a CPU from
initializing at startup, leaving it in the "switched out" mode. The
name of this parameter (and the help string) is confusing. This patch
renames it to switched_out, which should be more descriptive.
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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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The ISA class on stores the contents of ID registers on many
architectures. In order to make reset values of such registers
configurable, we make the class inherit from SimObject, which allows
us to use the normal generated parameter headers.
This patch introduces a Python helper method, BaseCPU.createThreads(),
which creates a set of ISAs for each of the threads in an SMT
system. Although it is currently only needed when creating
multi-threaded CPUs, it should always be called before instantiating
the system as this is an obvious place to configure ID registers
identifying a thread/CPU.
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This patch moves the draining interface from SimObject to a separate
class that can be used by any object needing draining. However,
objects not visible to the Python code (i.e., objects not deriving
from SimObject) still depend on their parents informing them when to
drain. This patch also gets rid of the CountedDrainEvent (which isn't
really an event) and replaces it with a DrainManager.
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This patch addresses the comments and feedback on the preceding patch
that reworks the clocks and now more clearly shows where cycles
(relative cycle counts) are used to express time.
Instead of bumping the existing patch I chose to make this a separate
patch, merely to try and focus the discussion around a smaller set of
changes. The two patches will be pushed together though.
This changes done as part of this patch are mostly following directly
from the introduction of the wrapper class, and change enough code to
make things compile and run again. There are definitely more places
where int/uint/Tick is still used to represent cycles, and it will
take some time to chase them all down. Similarly, a lot of parameters
should be changed from Param.Tick and Param.Unsigned to
Param.Cycles.
In addition, the use of curTick is questionable as there should not be
an absolute cycle. Potential solutions can be built on top of this
patch. There is a similar situation in the o3 CPU where
lastRunningCycle is currently counting in Cycles, and is still an
absolute time. More discussion to be had in other words.
An additional change that would be appropriate in the future is to
perform a similar wrapping of Tick and probably also introduce a
Ticks class along with suitable operators for all these classes.
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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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This patch is a first step to align the port names used in the Python
world and the C++ world. Ultimately it serves to make the use of
config.json together with output from the simulation easier, including
post-processing of statistics.
Most notably, the CPU, cache, and bus is addressed in this patch, and
there might be other ports that should be updated accordingly. The
dash name separator has also been replaced with a "." which is what is
used to concatenate the names in python, and a separation is made
between the master and slave port in the bus.
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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.
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This patch introduces port access methods that separates snoop
request/responses from normal memory request/responses. The
differentiation is made for functional, atomic and timing accesses and
builds on the introduction of master and slave ports.
Before the introduction of this patch, the packets belonging to the
different phases of the protocol (request -> [forwarded snoop request
-> snoop response]* -> response) all use the same port access
functions, even though the snoop packets flow in the opposite
direction to the normal packet. That is, a coherent master sends
normal request and receives responses, but receives snoop requests and
sends snoop responses (vice versa for the slave). These two distinct
phases now use different access functions, as described below.
Starting with the functional access, a master sends a request to a
slave through sendFunctional, and the request packet is turned into a
response before the call returns. In a system without cache coherence,
this is all that is needed from the functional interface. For the
cache-coherent scenario, a slave also sends snoop requests to coherent
masters through sendFunctionalSnoop, with responses returned within
the same packet pointer. This is currently used by the bus and caches,
and the LSQ of the O3 CPU. The send/recvFunctional and
send/recvFunctionalSnoop are moved from the Port super class to the
appropriate subclass.
Atomic accesses follow the same flow as functional accesses, with
request being sent from master to slave through sendAtomic. In the
case of cache-coherent ports, a slave can send snoop requests to a
master through sendAtomicSnoop. Just as for the functional access
methods, the atomic send and receive member functions are moved to the
appropriate subclasses.
The timing access methods are different from the functional and atomic
in that requests and responses are separated in time and
send/recvTiming are used for both directions. Hence, a master uses
sendTiming to send a request to a slave, and a slave uses sendTiming
to send a response back to a master, at a later point in time. Snoop
requests and responses travel in the opposite direction, similar to
what happens in functional and atomic accesses. With the introduction
of this patch, it is possible to determine the direction of packets in
the bus, and no longer necessary to look for both a master and a slave
port with the requested port id.
In contrast to the normal recvFunctional, recvAtomic and recvTiming
that are pure virtual functions, the recvFunctionalSnoop,
recvAtomicSnoop and recvTimingSnoop have a default implementation that
calls panic. This is to allow non-coherent master and slave ports to
not implement these functions.
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This patch introduces the notion of a master and slave port in the C++
code, thus bringing the previous classification from the Python
classes into the corresponding simulation objects and memory objects.
The patch enables us to classify behaviours into the two bins and add
assumptions and enfore compliance, also simplifying the two
interfaces. As a starting point, isSnooping is confined to a master
port, and getAddrRanges to slave ports. More of these specilisations
are to come in later patches.
The getPort function is not getMasterPort and getSlavePort, and
returns a port reference rather than a pointer as NULL would never be
a valid return value. The default implementation of these two
functions is placed in MemObject, and calls fatal.
The one drawback with this specific patch is that it requires some
code duplication, e.g. QueuedPort becomes QueuedMasterPort and
QueuedSlavePort, and BusPort becomes BusMasterPort and BusSlavePort
(avoiding multiple inheritance). With the later introduction of the
port interfaces, moving the functionality outside the port itself, a
lot of the duplicated code will disappear again.
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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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This patch continues the unification of how the different CPU models
create and share their instruction and data ports. Most importantly,
it forces every CPU to have an instruction and a data port, and gives
these ports explicit getters in the BaseCPU (getDataPort and
getInstPort). The patch helps in simplifying the code, make
assumptions more explicit, andfurther ease future patches related to
the CPU ports.
The biggest changes are in the in-order model (that was not modified
in the previous unification patch), which now moves the ports from the
CacheUnit to the CPU. It also distinguishes the instruction fetch and
load-store unit from the rest of the resources, and avoids the use of
indices and casting in favour of keeping track of these two units
explicitly (since they are always there anyways). The atomic, timing
and O3 model simply return references to their already existing ports.
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This patch adds the necessary flags to the SConstruct and SConscript
files for compiling using clang 2.9 and later (on Ubuntu et al and OSX
XCode 4.2), and also cleans up a bunch of compiler warnings found by
clang. Most of the warnings are related to hidden virtual functions,
comparisons with unsigneds >= 0, and if-statements with empty
bodies. A number of mismatches between struct and class are also
fixed. clang 2.8 is not working as it has problems with class names
that occur in multiple namespaces (e.g. Statistics in
kernel_stats.hh).
clang has a bug (http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=7247) which
causes confusion between the container std::set and the function
Packet::set, and this is currently addressed by not including the
entire namespace std, but rather selecting e.g. "using std::vector" in
the appropriate places.
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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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--HG--
rename : src/mem/vport.hh => src/mem/fs_translating_port_proxy.hh
rename : src/mem/translating_port.cc => src/mem/se_translating_port_proxy.cc
rename : src/mem/translating_port.hh => src/mem/se_translating_port_proxy.hh
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This patch simplifies the address-range determination mechanism and
also unifies the naming across ports and devices. It further splits
the queries for determining if a port is snooping and what address
ranges it responds to (aiming towards a separation of
cache-maintenance ports and pure memory-mapped ports). Default
behaviours are such that most ports do not have to define isSnooping,
and master ports need not implement getAddrRanges.
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This patch performs minimal changes to move the instruction and data
ports from specialised subclasses to the base CPU (to the largest
degree possible). Ultimately it servers to make the CPU(s) have a
well-defined interface to the memory sub-system.
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Port proxies are used to replace non-structural ports, and thus enable
all ports in the system to correspond to a structural entity. This has
the advantage of accessing memory through the normal memory subsystem
and thus allowing any constellation of distributed memories, address
maps, etc. Most accesses are done through the "system port" that is
used for loading binaries, debugging etc. For the entities that belong
to the CPU, e.g. threads and thread contexts, they wrap the CPU data
port in a port proxy.
The following replacements are made:
FunctionalPort > PortProxy
TranslatingPort > SETranslatingPortProxy
VirtualPort > FSTranslatingPortProxy
--HG--
rename : src/mem/vport.cc => src/mem/fs_translating_port_proxy.cc
rename : src/mem/vport.hh => src/mem/fs_translating_port_proxy.hh
rename : src/mem/translating_port.cc => src/mem/se_translating_port_proxy.cc
rename : src/mem/translating_port.hh => src/mem/se_translating_port_proxy.hh
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--HG--
extra : rebase_source : 043b9307eef3c5b87f8e6370765641e016ed1fa7
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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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Updated patches from Rick Strong's set that modify performance counters for
McPAT
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This step makes it easy to replace the accessor functions
(which still access a global variable) with ones that access
per-thread curTick values.
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These files really aren't general enough to belong in src/base.
This patch doesn't reorder include lines, leaving them unsorted
in many cases, but Nate's magic script will fix that up shortly.
--HG--
rename : src/base/sched_list.hh => src/cpu/sched_list.hh
rename : src/base/timebuf.hh => src/cpu/timebuf.hh
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This change is a low level and pervasive reorganization of how PCs are managed
in M5. Back when Alpha was the only ISA, there were only 2 PCs to worry about,
the PC and the NPC, and the lsb of the PC signaled whether or not you were in
PAL mode. As other ISAs were added, we had to add an NNPC, micro PC and next
micropc, x86 and ARM introduced variable length instruction sets, and ARM
started to keep track of mode bits in the PC. Each CPU model handled PCs in
its own custom way that needed to be updated individually to handle the new
dimensions of variability, or, in the case of ARMs mode-bit-in-the-pc hack,
the complexity could be hidden in the ISA at the ISA implementation's expense.
Areas like the branch predictor hadn't been updated to handle branch delay
slots or micropcs, and it turns out that had introduced a significant (10s of
percent) performance bug in SPARC and to a lesser extend MIPS. Rather than
perpetuate the problem by reworking O3 again to handle the PC features needed
by x86, this change was introduced to rework PC handling in a more modular,
transparent, and hopefully efficient way.
PC type:
Rather than having the superset of all possible elements of PC state declared
in each of the CPU models, each ISA defines its own PCState type which has
exactly the elements it needs. A cross product of canned PCState classes are
defined in the new "generic" ISA directory for ISAs with/without delay slots
and microcode. These are either typedef-ed or subclassed by each ISA. To read
or write this structure through a *Context, you use the new pcState() accessor
which reads or writes depending on whether it has an argument. If you just
want the address of the current or next instruction or the current micro PC,
you can get those through read-only accessors on either the PCState type or
the *Contexts. These are instAddr(), nextInstAddr(), and microPC(). Note the
move away from readPC. That name is ambiguous since it's not clear whether or
not it should be the actual address to fetch from, or if it should have extra
bits in it like the PAL mode bit. Each class is free to define its own
functions to get at whatever values it needs however it needs to to be used in
ISA specific code. Eventually Alpha's PAL mode bit could be moved out of the
PC and into a separate field like ARM.
These types can be reset to a particular pc (where npc = pc +
sizeof(MachInst), nnpc = npc + sizeof(MachInst), upc = 0, nupc = 1 as
appropriate), printed, serialized, and compared. There is a branching()
function which encapsulates code in the CPU models that checked if an
instruction branched or not. Exactly what that means in the context of branch
delay slots which can skip an instruction when not taken is ambiguous, and
ideally this function and its uses can be eliminated. PCStates also generally
know how to advance themselves in various ways depending on if they point at
an instruction, a microop, or the last microop of a macroop. More on that
later.
Ideally, accessing all the PCs at once when setting them will improve
performance of M5 even though more data needs to be moved around. This is
because often all the PCs need to be manipulated together, and by getting them
all at once you avoid multiple function calls. Also, the PCs of a particular
thread will have spatial locality in the cache. Previously they were grouped
by element in arrays which spread out accesses.
Advancing the PC:
The PCs were previously managed entirely by the CPU which had to know about PC
semantics, try to figure out which dimension to increment the PC in, what to
set NPC/NNPC, etc. These decisions are best left to the ISA in conjunction
with the PC type itself. Because most of the information about how to
increment the PC (mainly what type of instruction it refers to) is contained
in the instruction object, a new advancePC virtual function was added to the
StaticInst class. Subclasses provide an implementation that moves around the
right element of the PC with a minimal amount of decision making. In ISAs like
Alpha, the instructions always simply assign NPC to PC without having to worry
about micropcs, nnpcs, etc. The added cost of a virtual function call should
be outweighed by not having to figure out as much about what to do with the
PCs and mucking around with the extra elements.
One drawback of making the StaticInsts advance the PC is that you have to
actually have one to advance the PC. This would, superficially, seem to
require decoding an instruction before fetch could advance. This is, as far as
I can tell, realistic. fetch would advance through memory addresses, not PCs,
perhaps predicting new memory addresses using existing ones. More
sophisticated decisions about control flow would be made later on, after the
instruction was decoded, and handed back to fetch. If branching needs to
happen, some amount of decoding needs to happen to see that it's a branch,
what the target is, etc. This could get a little more complicated if that gets
done by the predecoder, but I'm choosing to ignore that for now.
Variable length instructions:
To handle variable length instructions in x86 and ARM, the predecoder now
takes in the current PC by reference to the getExtMachInst function. It can
modify the PC however it needs to (by setting NPC to be the PC + instruction
length, for instance). This could be improved since the CPU doesn't know if
the PC was modified and always has to write it back.
ISA parser:
To support the new API, all PC related operand types were removed from the
parser and replaced with a PCState type. There are two warts on this
implementation. First, as with all the other operand types, the PCState still
has to have a valid operand type even though it doesn't use it. Second, using
syntax like PCS.npc(target) doesn't work for two reasons, this looks like the
syntax for operand type overriding, and the parser can't figure out if you're
reading or writing. Instructions that use the PCS operand (which I've
consistently called it) need to first read it into a local variable,
manipulate it, and then write it back out.
Return address stack:
The return address stack needed a little extra help because, in the presence
of branch delay slots, it has to merge together elements of the return PC and
the call PC. To handle that, a buildRetPC utility function was added. There
are basically only two versions in all the ISAs, but it didn't seem short
enough to put into the generic ISA directory. Also, the branch predictor code
in O3 and InOrder were adjusted so that they always store the PC of the actual
call instruction in the RAS, not the next PC. If the call instruction is a
microop, the next PC refers to the next microop in the same macroop which is
probably not desirable. The buildRetPC function advances the PC intelligently
to the next macroop (in an ISA specific way) so that that case works.
Change in stats:
There were no change in stats except in MIPS and SPARC in the O3 model. MIPS
runs in about 9% fewer ticks. SPARC runs with 30%-50% fewer ticks, which could
likely be improved further by setting call/return instruction flags and taking
advantage of the RAS.
TODO:
Add != operators to the PCState classes, defined trivially to be !(a==b).
Smooth out places where PCs are split apart, passed around, and put back
together later. I think this might happen in SPARC's fault code. Add ISA
specific constructors that allow setting PC elements without calling a bunch
of accessors. Try to eliminate the need for the branching() function. Factor
out Alpha's PAL mode pc bit into a separate flag field, and eliminate places
where it's blindly masked out or tested in the PC.
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