> On Oct. 12, 2015, 9:58 a.m., Nilay Vaish wrote:
> > Can you explain why it is no longer necessary?
> 
> Curtis Dunham wrote:
>     Empirically, all regressions still pass. :-)
>     
>     It might be easier to explain why it was ever necessary, which is 
> definitely before my time with gem5.  This check was introduced in 2011 
> (3893d9d) with the comment "make sure fetch doesn't go off into the weeds 
> during speculation".  This check is unrealistic and now o3 doesn't have any 
> issues because it can handle whatever faults come from bad fetch requests, as 
> it should.

I agree that this check is unrealistic, but "all regressions still pass" is 
(unfortunately) pretty far from a validation that the check is unnecessary. 
When you're misspeculating in kernel mode, and there's a TLB-bypass portion of 
the address space, you can end up fetching from just about anywhere (invalid 
physical addresses, I/O space, etc.). It would be ideal if we could tolerate 
all of these things properly in the memory system, but I'd feel a lot better if 
we knew exactly what circumstances prompted Ali to put this in there in the 
first place, and knew for a fact that that specific issue was now handled 
properly otherwise---the software application of Chesterton's Fence 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence ).


- Steve


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On Oct. 12, 2015, 9:13 a.m., Curtis Dunham wrote:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> http://reviews.gem5.org/r/3150/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (Updated Oct. 12, 2015, 9:13 a.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for Default.
> 
> 
> Repository: gem5
> 
> 
> Description
> -------
> 
> This check is no longer necessary.
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   src/cpu/o3/fetch.hh d90aec9435bd720f2af2ef809680608b3b6955c5 
>   src/cpu/o3/fetch_impl.hh d90aec9435bd720f2af2ef809680608b3b6955c5 
> 
> Diff: http://reviews.gem5.org/r/3150/diff/
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Curtis Dunham
> 
>

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