From e8236503ce70ea83f4f61716f54421b32ce009ce Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nikos Nikoleris Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2017 16:38:36 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] mem-cache: Prune unnecessary writebacks in exclusive caches Exclusive caches use the tempBlock to fill for responses from a downstream cache. The reason for this is that they only pass the block to the cache above without keeping a copy. When all requests are serviced the block is immediately invalidated unless it is dirty, in which case it has to be written back to the memory below. To avoid unnecessary writebacks, this changeset forces mostly exclusive caches to issuse requests that can only fetch clean data when possible. Reported-by: Quereshi Muhammad Avais Change-Id: I01b377563f5aa3e12d22f425a04db7c023071849 Reviewed-by: Andreas Sandberg Reviewed-on: https://gem5-review.googlesource.com/5061 Reviewed-by: Jason Lowe-Power Maintainer: Nikos Nikoleris --- src/mem/cache/cache.cc | 12 +++++++++++- 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/src/mem/cache/cache.cc b/src/mem/cache/cache.cc index a83f8ab12..421fa5b72 100644 --- a/src/mem/cache/cache.cc +++ b/src/mem/cache/cache.cc @@ -1021,8 +1021,18 @@ Cache::createMissPacket(PacketPtr cpu_pkt, CacheBlk *blk, cmd = MemCmd::SCUpgradeFailReq; } else { // block is invalid + + // If the request does not need a writable there are two cases + // where we need to ensure the response will not fetch the + // block in dirty state: + // * this cache is read only and it does not perform + // writebacks, + // * this cache is mostly exclusive and will not fill (since + // it does not fill it will have to writeback the dirty data + // immediately which generates uneccesary writebacks). + bool force_clean_rsp = isReadOnly || clusivity == Enums::mostly_excl; cmd = needsWritable ? MemCmd::ReadExReq : - (isReadOnly ? MemCmd::ReadCleanReq : MemCmd::ReadSharedReq); + (force_clean_rsp ? MemCmd::ReadCleanReq : MemCmd::ReadSharedReq); } PacketPtr pkt = new Packet(cpu_pkt->req, cmd, blkSize); -- 2.30.2