Understanding TOPAZ-GEM5 interface

[Xiyue Xiang]

Hi, TOPAZ supporting team,

I am running SPEC2006 in SE mode with TOPAZ enabled. I have several general questions regarding to the interface of GEM5 and TOPAZ.

1) Statistics
It looks like the ResetStats tag in SimulaGem5.sgm doesn't affect the result when using GEM5. I specified -s=20M, -W=20M and --cache in my command line, intending to set warm up period to be 20M. Does it mean TOPAZ will also start functioning after 20M? Or TOPAZ will start collecting stats from 20M?

2) Entry point of TOPAZ
I think I am much more familiar with TOPAZ than GEM5. I am really really new to GEM5. I know TOPAZ provides only several files as interface with GEM5, located in ./src/mem/ruby/network/topaz/. However, I am having a hard time understanding the code flow when connecting to GEM5. Where is the entry point when GEM5 sends packets to TOPAZ (i.e. both in TOPAZ-GEM5 interface and TOPAZ itself)? I am less interested in GEM5 itself for now, since it is only a traffic generator in NOC study.

Many Thanks.

Xiyue Xiang 

[Valentin Puente]

1) those command line options i think are gem5 parameters. In any case, reset stats in topaz is used only in standalone simulations. Topaz works all the time in all cases (unless you use checkpoints... During checkpoint load it is disabled)

2) take a look at
https://code.google.com/p/tpzsimul/wiki/GEMSExplained

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[Xiyue Xiang]

Hi, Dr. Valentin,

Thanks for your reply.

Is there any way to terminate the GEM5 and let TOPAZ output the statistics before running the full benchmark application? 

P.s. If using --maxinsts (total number of instructions to simulate), GEM5 can terminate the simulation. However, if some instructions are spinning on other instructions for synchronization, it will be problematic to decide when to terminate the application.

Xiyue Xiang

[Valentin Puente]

Yes. Try sending sigusr2 to the process.

You have to use m5ops to avoid that problem (in any case it is a orobkem with multi threaded workloads). Ask gem5 user list. They will help you.