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This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
http://reviews.gem5.org/r/3167/
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(Updated Oct. 26, 2015, 5:26 p.m.)


Review request for Default.


Repository: gem5


Description (updated)
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Changeset 11179:f5cb3abbb62b
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Invalidating TLB entry on page fault in x86

As per the x86 architecture specification, matching TLB entries need to be
invalidated on a page fault. For instance, after a page fault due to inadequate
protection bits on a TLB hit, the TLB entry needs to be invalidated. This
behavior is clearly specified in the x86 architecture manuals from both AMD and
Intel.  This invalidation is missing currently in gem5, due to which linux
kernel versions 3.8 and up cannot be simulated efficiently. This is exposed by
a linux optimisation in commit e4a1cc56e4d728eb87072c71c07581524e5160b1, which
removes a tlb flush on updating page table entries in x86.

Testing: Linux kernel versions 3.8 onwards were booting very slowly in FS mode,
due to repeated page faults (~300000 before the first print statement in a bash
file). Ensured that page fault rate drops drastically and observed reduction in
boot time from order of hours to minutes for linux kernel v3.8 and v3.11


Diffs (updated)
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  src/arch/x86/tlb.hh 741b3059946e 
  src/arch/x86/tlb.cc 741b3059946e 

Diff: http://reviews.gem5.org/r/3167/diff/


Testing
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Thanks,

Swapnil Haria

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