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Version 22.1.0.0

This release has 500 contributions from 48 unique contributors and marks our second major release of 2022. This release incorporates several new features, improvements, and bug fixes for the computer architecture reserach community.

See below for more details!

New features and improvements

  • The gem5 binary can now be compiled to include multiple ISA targets. A compilation of gem5 which includes all gem5 ISAs can be created using: scons build/ALL/gem5.opt. This will use the Ruby MESI_Two_Level cache coherence protocol by default, to use other protocols: scons build/ALL/gem5.opt PROTOCOL=<other protocol>. The classic cache system may continue to be used regardless as to which Ruby cache coherence protocol is compiled.
  • The m5 Python module now includes functions to set exit events are particular simululation ticks:
    • setMaxTick(tick) : Used to to specify the maximum simulation tick.
    • getMaxTick() : Used to obtain the maximum simulation tick value.
    • getTicksUntilMax(): Used to get the number of ticks remaining until the maximum tick is reached.
    • scheduleTickExitFromCurrent(tick) : Used to schedule an exit exit event a specified number of ticks in the future.
    • scheduleTickExitAbsolute(tick) : Used to schedule an exit event as a specified tick.
  • We now include the RiscvMatched board as part of the gem5 stdlib. This board is modeled after the HiFive Unmatched board and may be used to emulate its behavior. See "configs/example/gem5_library/riscv-matched-fs.py" and "configs/example/gem5_library/riscv-matched-hello.py" for examples using this board.
  • An API for SimPoints has been added. SimPoints can substantially improve gem5 Simulation time by only simulating representative parts of a simulation then extrapolating statistical data accordingly. Examples of using SimPoints with gem5 can be found in "configs/example/gem5_library/checkpoints/simpoints-se-checkpoint.py" and "configs/example/gem5_library/checkpoints/simpoints-se-restore.py".
  • "Workloads" have been introduced to gem5. Workloads have been incorporated into the gem5 Standard library. They can be used specify the software to be run on a simulated system that come complete with input parameters and any other dependencies necessary to run a simuation on the target hardware. At the level of the gem5 configuration script a user may specify a workload via a board's set_workload function. For example, set_workload(Workload("x86-ubuntu-18.04-boot")) sets the board to use the "x86-ubuntu-18.04-boot" workload. This workload specifies a boot consisting of the Linux 5.4.49 kernel then booting an Ubunutu 18.04 disk image, to exit upon booting. Workloads are agnostic to underlying gem5 design and, via the gem5-resources infrastructure, will automatically retrieve all necessary kernels, disk-images, etc., necessary to execute. Examples of using gem5 Workloads can be found in "configs/example/gem5_library/x86-ubuntu-ruby.py" and "configs/example/gem5_library/riscv-ubuntu-run.py".
  • To aid gem5 developers, we have incorporated pre-commit checks into gem5. These checks automatically enforce the gem5 style guide on Python files and a subset of other requirements (such as line length) on altered code prior to a git commit. Users may install pre-commit by running ./util/pre-commit-install.sh. Passing these checks is a requirement to submit code to gem5 so installation is strongly advised.
  • A multiprocessing module has been added. This allows for multiple simulations to be run from a single gem5 execution via a single gem5 configuration script. Example of usage found in this commit message. Note: This feature is still in development. While functional, it'll be subject to subtantial changes in future releases of gem5.
  • The stdlib's ArmBoard now supports Ruby caches.
  • Due to numerious fixes and improvements, Ubuntu 22.04 can be booted as a gem5 workload, both in FS and SE mode.
  • Substantial improvements have been made to gem5's GDB capabilities.
  • The HBM2Stack has been added to the gem5 stdlib as a memory component.
  • The MinorCPU has been fully incorporated into the gem5 Standard Library.
  • We now allow for full-system simulation of GPU applications. The introduction of GPU FS mode allows for the same use-cases as SE mode but reduces the requirement of specific host environments or usage of a Docker container. The GPU FS mode also has improved simulated speed by functionally simulating memory copies, and provides an easier update path for gem5 developers. An X86 host and KVM are required to run GPU FS mode.

API (user facing) changes

  • The default CPU Vendor String has been updated to HygonGenuine. This is due to newer versions of GLIBC being more strict about checking current system's supported features. The previous value, M5 Simulator, is not recognized as a valid vendor string and therefore GLIBC returns an error.
  • The stdlib's _connect_things funciton call has been moved from the AbstractBoard's constructor to be run as board pre-instantiation process. This is to overcome instances where stdlib components (memory, processor, and cache hierarhcy) require Board information known only after its construction. This change breaks cases where a user utilizes the stdlib AbstractBoard but does not use the stdlib Simulator module. This can be fixed by adding the _pre_instantiate function before m5.instantiate. An exception has been added which explains this fix, if this error occurs.
  • The setting of checkpoints has been moved from the stdlib's "set_workload" functions to the Simulator module. Setting of checkpoints via the stdlib's "set_workload" functions is now deprecated and will be removed in future releases of gem5.
  • The gem5 namespace Trace has been renamed trace to conform to the gem5 style guide.
  • Due to the allowing of multiple ISAs per gem5 build, the TARGET_ISA variable has been replaced with USE_$(ISA) variables. For example, if a build contains both the X86 and ARM ISAs the USE_X86 and USE_ARM variables will be set.

Big Fixes

  • Several compounding bugs were causing bugs with floating point operations within gem5 simulations. These have been fixed.
  • Certain emulated syscalls were behaving incorrectly when using RISC-V due to incorrect open(2) flag values. These values have been fixed.
  • The GIVv3 List register mapping has been fixed.
  • Access permissions for GICv3 cpu registers have been fixed.
  • In previous releases of gem5 the sim_quantum value was set for all cores when using the Standard Library. This caused issues when setting exit events at a particular tick as it resulted in the exit being off by sim_quantum. As such, the sim_quantum value is only when using KVM cores.
  • PCI ranges in VExpress_GEM5_Foundation fixed.
  • The SwitchableProcessor processor has been fixed to allow switching to a KVM core. Previously the SwitchableProcessor only allowed a user to switch from a KVM core to a non-KVM core.
  • The Standard Library has been fixed to permit multicore simulations in SE mode.
  • A bug was fixed in the rcr X86 instruction.

Build related changes

  • gem5 can now be compiled with Scons 4 build system.
  • gem5 can now be compiled with Clang version 14 (minimum Clang version 6).
  • gem5 can now be compiled with GCC Version 12 (minimum GCC version 7).

Other minor updates

  • The gem5 stdlib examples in "configs/example/gem5_library" have been updated to, where appropriate, use the stdlib's Simulator module. These example configurations can be used for reference as to how Simulator module may be utilized in gem5.
  • Granulated SGPR computation has been added for gfx9 gpu-compute.
  • The stdlib statistics have been improved:
    • A get_simstats function has been added to access statistics from the Simulator module.
    • Statistics can be printed: print(simstats.board.core.some_integer).
  • GDB ports are now specified for each workload, as opposed to per-simulation run.
  • The m5 utility has been expanded to include "workbegin" and "workend" annotations. This can be added with m5 workbegin and m5 workend.
  • A PrivateL1SharedL2CacheHierarchy has been added to the Standard Library.
  • A GEM5_USE_PROXY environment variable has been added. This allows users to specify a socks5 proxy server to use when obtaining gem5 resources and the resources.json file. It uses the format <host>:<port>.
  • The fastmodel support has been improved to function with Linux Kernel 5.x.
  • The set_se_binary_workload function now allows for the passing of input parameters to a binary workload.
  • A functional CHI cache hierarchy has been added to the gem5 Standard Library: "src/python/gem5/components/cachehierarchies/chi/private_l1_cache_hierarchy.py".
  • The RISC-V K extension has been added. It includes the following instructions:
    • Zbkx: xperm8, xperm4
    • Zknd: aes64ds, aes64dsm, aes64im, aes64ks1i, aes64ks2
    • Zkne: aes64es, aes64esm, aes64ks1i, aes64ks2
    • Zknh: sha256sig0, sha256sig1, sha256sum0, sha256sum1, sha512sig0, sha512sig1, sha512sum0, sha512sum1
    • Zksed: sm4ed, sm4ks
    • Zksh: sm3p0, sm3p1

Version 22.0.0.2

[HOTFIX] This hotfix contains a set of critical fixes to be applied to gem5 v22.0. This hotfix:

  • Fixes the ARM booting of Linux kernels making use of FEAT_PAuth.
  • Removes incorrect requires functions in AbstractProcessor and AbstractGeneratorCore. These requires were causing errors when running generators with any ISA other than NULL.
  • Fixes the standard library's set_se_binary_workload function to exit on Exit Events (work items) by default.
  • Connects a previously unconnected PCI port in the example SST RISC-V config to the membus.
  • Updates the SST-gem5 README with the correct download links.
  • Adds a getAddrRanges function to the HBMCtrl. This ensures the XBar connected to the controller can see the address ranges covered by both pseudo channels.
  • Fixes test_download_resources.py so the correct parameter is passed to the download test script.

Version 22.0.0.1

[HOTFIX] Fixes relative import in "src/python/gem5/components/processors/simple_core.py".

The import from python.gem5.utils.requires import requires in v22.0.0.0 of gem5 is incorrect as it causes problems when executing gem5 binaries in certain directories (python isn't necessary included). To resolve this, this import has been changed to from ...utils.requires imports requires. This should work in all supported use-cases.

Version 22.0.0.0

gem5 version 22.0 has been slightly delayed, but we a have a very strong release! This release has 660 changes from 48 unique contributors. While there are not too many big ticket features, the community has done a lot to improve the stablity and add bugfixes to gem5 over this release. That said, we have a few cool new features like full system GPU support, a huge number of Arm improvements, and an improved HBM model.

See below for more details!

New features

Many RISC-V instructions added

The following RISCV instructions have been added to gem5's RISC-V ISA:

  • Zba instructions: add.uw, sh1add, sh1add.uw, sh2add, sh2add.uw, sh3add, sh3add.uw, slli.uw
  • Zbb instructions: andn, orn, xnor, clz, clzw, ctz, ctzw, cpop, cpopw, max, maxu, min, minu, sext.b, sext.h, zext.h, rol, rolw, ror, rori, roriw, rorw, orc.b, rev8
  • Zbc instructions: clmul, clmulh, clmulr
  • Zbs instructions: bclr, bclri, bext, bexti, binv, binvi, bset, bseti
  • Zfh instructions: flh, fsh, fmadd.h, fmsub.h, fnmsub.h, fnmadd.h, fadd.h, fsub.h, fmul.h, fdiv.h, fsqrt.h, fsgnj.h, fsgnjn.h, fsgnjx.h, fmin.h, fmax.h, fcvt.s.h, fcvt.h.s, fcvt.d.h, fcvt.h.d, fcvt.w.h, fcvt.h.w, fcvt.wu.h, fcvt.h.wu

Improvements to the stdlib automatic resource downloader

The gem5 standard library's downloader has been re-engineered to more efficiently obtain the resources.json file. It is now cached instead of retrieved on each resource retrieval.

The resources.json directory has been moved to a more permament URL at http://resources.gem5.org/resources.json.

Tests have also been added to ensure the resources module continues to function correctly.

gem5 in SystemC support revamped

The gem5 in SystemC has been revamped to accomodate new research needs. These changes include stability improvements and bugs fixes. The gem5 testing suite has also been expanded to include gem5 in SystemC tests.

Improved GPU support

Users may now simulate an AMD GPU device in full system mode using the ROCm 4.2 compute stack. Until v21.2, gem5 only supported GPU simulation in Syscall-Emulation mode with ROCm 4.0. See src/gpu-fs/README.md in gem5-resources and example scripts in configs/example/gpufs/ for example scripts which run GPU full system simulations.

A GPU Ruby random tester has been added to help validate the correctness of the CPU and GPU Ruby coherence protocols as part of every kokoro check-in. This helps validate the correctness of the protocols before new changes are checked in. Currently the tester focuses on the protocols used with the GPU, but the ideas are extensible to other protocols. The work is based on "Autonomous Data-Race-Free GPU Testing", IISWC 2019, Tuan Ta, Xianwei Zhang, Anthony Gutierrez, and Bradford M. Beckmann.

An Arm board has been added to the gem5 Standard Library

Via this change, an ARM Board, ArmBoard, has been added to the gem5 standard library. This allows for an ARM system to be run using the gem5 stdlib components.

An example gem5 configuration script using this board can be found in configs/example/gem5_library/arm-ubuntu-boot-exit.py.

createAddrRanges now supports NUMA configurations

When the system is configured for NUMA, it has multiple memory ranges, and each memory range is mapped to a corresponding NUMA node. For this, the change enables createAddrRanges to map address ranges to only a given HNFs.

Jira ticker here: https://gem5.atlassian.net/browse/GEM5-1187.

API (user-facing) changes

CPU model types are no longer simply the model name, but they are specialized for each ISA

For instance, the O3CPU is now the X86O3CPU and ArmO3CPU, etc. This requires a number of changes if you have your own CPU models. See https://gem5-review.googlesource.com/c/public/gem5/+/52490 for details.

Additionally, this requires changes in any configuration script which inherits from the old CPU types.

In many cases, if there is only a single ISA compiled the old name will still work. However, this is not 100% true.

Finally, CPU_MODELS is no longer a parameter in build_opts/. Now, if you want to compile a CPU model for a particular ISA you will have to add a new file for the CPU model in the arch/ directory.

Many changes in the CPU and ISA APIs

If you have any specialized CPU models or any ISAs which are not in the mainline, expect many changes when rebasing on this release.

Bug Fixes

Build-related changes

  • Variable in env in the SConscript files now requires you to use env['CONF'] to access them. Anywhere that env['<VARIABLE>'] appeared should noe be env['CONF']['<VARIABLE>']
  • Internal build files are now in a per-target gem5.build directory
  • All build variable are per-target and there are no longer any shared variables.

Other changes

  • New bootloader is required for Arm VExpress_GEM5_Foundation platform. See https://gem5.atlassian.net/browse/GEM5-1222 for details.
  • The MemCtrl interface has been updated to use more inheritance to make extending it to other memory types (e.g., HBM pseudo channels) easier.

Version 21.2.1.1

[HOTFIX] In order to ensure v21 of gem5 remains compatible with future changes, the gem5 stdlib downloader has been updated to obtain the resources.json file from https://resources.gem5.org/resources.json. As this domain is under the gem5 project control, unlike the previous googlesource URL, we can ensure longer-term stability. The fix also ensures the downloader can parse plain-text JSON and base64 encoding of the resources.json file.

Version 21.2.1.0

Version 21.2.1 is a minor gem5 release consisting of bug fixes. The 21.2.1 release:

Version 21.2.0.0

API (user-facing) changes

All SimObject declarations in SConscript files now require a sim_objects parameter which should list all SimObject classes declared in that file which need c++ wrappers. Those are the SimObject classes which have a type attribute defined.

Also, there is now an optional enums parameter which needs to list all of the Enum types defined in that SimObject file. This should technically only include Enum types which generate c++ wrapper files, but currently all Enums do that so all Enums should be listed.

Initial release of the "gem5 standard library"

Previous release had an alpha release of the "components library." This has now been wrapped in a larger "standard library".

The gem5 standard library is a Python package which contains the following:

  • Components: A set of Python classes which wrap gem5's models. Some of the components are preconfigured to match real hardware (e.g., SingleChannelDDR3_1600) and others are parameterized. Components can be combined together onto boards which can be simulated.
  • Resources: A set of utilities to interact with the gem5-resources repository/website. Using this module allows you to automatically download and use many of gem5's prebuilt resources (e.g., kernels, disk images, etc.).
  • Simulate: THIS MODULE IS IN BETA! A simpler interface to gem5's simulation/run capabilities. Expect API changes to this module in future releases. Feedback is appreciated.
  • Prebuilt: These are fully functioning prebuilt systems. These systems are built from the components in components. This release has a "demo" board to show an example of how to use the prebuilt systems.

Examples of using the gem5 standard library can be found in configs/example/gem5_library/. The source code is found under src/python/gem5.

Many Arm improvements

GPU improvements

  • Vega support: gfx900 (Vega) discrete GPUs are now both supported and tested with gem5-resources applications.
  • Improvements to the VIPER coherence protocol to fix bugs and improve performance: this improves scalability for large applications running on relatively small GPU configurations, which caused deadlocks in VIPER's L2. Instead of continually replaying these requests, the updated protocol instead wakes up the pending requests once the prior request to this cache line has completed.
  • Additional GPU applications: The Pannotia graph analytics benchmark suite has been added to gem5-resources, including Makefiles, READMEs, and sample commands on how to run each application in gem5.
  • Regression Testing: Several GPU applications are now tested as part of the nightly and weekly regressions, which improves test coverage and avoids introducing inadvertent bugs.
  • Minor updates to the architecture model: We also added several small changes/fixes to the HSA queue size (to allow larger GPU applications with many kernels to run), the TLB (to create GCN3- and Vega-specific TLBs), adding new instructions that were previously unimplemented in GCN3 and Vega, and fixing corner cases for some instructions that were leading to incorrect behavior.

gem5-SST bridges revived

We now support gem5 cores connected to SST memory system for gem5 full system mode. This has been tested for RISC-V and Arm. See ext/sst/README.md for details.

LupIO devices

LupIO devices were developed by Prof. Joel Porquet-Lupine as a set of open-source I/O devices to be used for teaching. They were designed to model a complete set of I/O devices that are neither too complex to teach in a classroom setting, or too simple to translate to understanding real-world devices. Our collection consists of a real-time clock, random number generator, terminal device, block device, system controller, timer device, programmable interrupt controller, as well as an inter-processor interrupt controller. A more detailed outline of LupIO can be found here: https://luplab.cs.ucdavis.edu/assets/lupio/wcae21-porquet-lupio-paper.pdf. Within gem5, these devices offer the capability to run simulations with a complete set of I/O devices that are both easy to understand and manipulate.

The initial implementation of the LupIO devices are for the RISC-V ISA. However, they should be simple to extend to other ISAs through small source changes and updating the SConscripts.

Other improvements

  • Removed master/slave terminology: this was a closed ticket which was marked as done even though there were multiple references of master/slave in the config scripts which we fixed.
  • Armv8.2-A FEAT_UAO implementation.
  • Implemented 'at' variants of file syscall in SE mode (https://gem5.atlassian.net/browse/GEM5-1098).
  • Improved modularity in SConscripts.
  • Arm atomic support in the CHI protocol
  • Many testing improvements.
  • New "tester" CPU which mimics GUPS.

Version 21.1.0.2

[HOTFIX] A commit introduced std::vector with resize() to initialize all storages. This caused data duplication in statistics and broke the Vector statistics. This hotfix initializes using loops which fixes the broken statistics.

Version 21.1.0.1

[HOTFIX] A "'deprecated' attribute directive ignored" warning was being thrown frequently when trying to build v21.1.0.0. While this issue did not break the build, it made reading the build output difficult and caused confused. As such a patch has been applied to fix this issue.

Version 21.1.0.0

Since v21.0 we have received 780 commits with 48 unique contributors, closing 64 issues on our Jira Issue Tracker. In addition to our first gem5 minor release, we have included a range of new features, and API changes which we outline below.

Added the Components Library [Alpha Release]

The purpose of the gem5 components library is to provide gem5 users a standard set of common and useful gem5 components, pre-built, to add to their experiments. The gem5 components library adopts a modular architecture design so components may be easily added, removed, and extended, as needed.

Examples of using the gem5 components library can be found in configs/example/components-library.

Important Disclaimer: This is a pre-alpha release. The purpose of this release is to get community feedback. Though some testing has been done, we expect regular fixes and improvements until the library reaches a stable state. A Jira Ticket outlining TODOs and known bugs can be found at https://gem5.atlassian.net/browse/GEM5-648.

Improvements to GPU simulation

ROCm 4.0 support

ROCm 4.0 is now officially supported.

gfx801 (Carrizo) and gfx803 (Fiji) support

gfx801 (Carrizo) and gfx803 (Fiji) are both supported and tested with the gem5-resources applications.

Better scoreboarding support

Better scoreboarding support has been added. This reduces stalls by up to 42%.

Accuracy and coverage stat added to prefetcher caches

Accuracy and coverage stats have been added for prefetcher caches. Accuracy is defined as the ratio of the number of prefetch requests counted as useful over the total number of prefetch requests issued. Coverage is defined as the ratio of the number of prefetch requests counted as useful over the number of useful prefetch request plus the remaining demand misses.

POWER 64-bit SE mode

The POWER 64-bit ISA is now supported in Syscall Execution mode.

RISC-V PMP now supported

gem5 now supports simulation of RISC-V Physical Memory Protection (PMP). Simulations can boot and run Keystone and Eyrie.

Improvements to the replacement policies

The gem5 replacement policies framework now supports more complex algorithms. It now allows using addresses, PC, and other information within a policy.

Note: Assuming this information is promptly available at the cache may be unrealistic.

Set Dueling

Classes that handle set dueling have been created (Dueler and DuelingMonitor). They can be used in conjunction with different cache policies. A replacement policy that uses it has been added for guidance.

RISC-V is now supported as a host machine.

gem5 is now compilable and runnable on a RISC-V host system.

New Deprecation MARCOs added

Deprecation MACROS have been added for deprecating namespaces (GEM5_DEPRECATED_NAMESPACE), and deprecating other MACROs (GEM5_DEPRECATED_MACRO).

Note: For technical reasons, using old macros won't produce any deprecation warnings.

Refactoring of the gem5 Namespaces

Snake case has been adopted as the new convention for name spaces. As a consequence, multiple namespaces have been renamed:

  • Minor -> minor
  • Loader -> loader
  • Stats -> statistics
  • Enums -> enums
  • Net -> networking
  • ProbePoints -> probing
  • ContextSwitchTaskId -> context_switch_task_id
  • Prefetcher -> prefetch
  • Encoder -> encoder
  • Compressor -> compression
  • QoS -> qos
  • ReplacementPolicy -> replacement_policy
  • Mouse -> mouse
  • Keyboard -> keyboard
  • Int -> as_int
  • Float -> as_float
  • FastModel -> fastmodel
  • GuestABI -> guest_abi
  • LockedMem -> locked_mem
  • DeliveryMode -> delivery_mode
  • PseudoInst -> pseudo_inst
  • DecodeCache -> decode_cache
  • BitfieldBackend -> bitfield_backend
  • FreeBSD -> free_bsd
  • Linux -> linux
  • Units -> units
  • SimClock -> sim_clock
  • BloomFilter -> bloom_filter
  • X86Macroop -> x86_macroop
  • ConditionTests -> condition_tests
  • IntelMP -> intelmp
  • SMBios -> smbios
  • RomLables -> rom_labels
  • SCMI -> scmi
  • iGbReg -> igbreg
  • Ps2 -> ps2
  • CopyEngineReg -> copy_engine_reg
  • TxdOp -> txd_op
  • Sinic -> sinic
  • Debug -> debug

In addition some other namespaces were added:

  • gem5::ruby, for Ruby-related files
  • gem5::ruby::garnet, for garnet-related files
  • gem5::o3, for the O3-cpu's related files
  • gem5::memory, for files related to memories

Finally, the m5 namespace has been renamed gem5.

MACROs in base/compiler.hh

The MACROs in base/compiler.hh of the form M5_* have been deprecated and replaced with macros of the form GEM5_*, with some other minor name adjustments.

MemObject Removed

MemObject simobject had been marked for deprecation and has now been officially removed from the gem5 codebase.

Minimum GCC version increased to 7; minimum Clang version increased to 6; Clang 10 and 11 supported; C++17 supported

GCC version 5 and 6 are no longer supported. GCC 7 is now the minimum GCC compiler version supported. This changes allows has allowed us to move to the C++17 standard for development.

In addition, the minimum Clang version has increased to 6, and Clang 10 and 11 are now officially supported.

Version 21.0.1.0

Version 21.0.1 is a minor gem5 release consisting of bug fixes. The 21.0.1 release:

  • Fixes the GCN-GPU Dockerfile to pull from the v21-0 bucket.
  • Fixes the tests to download from the v21-0 bucket instead of the develop bucket.
  • Fixes the Temperature class:
  • Eliminates a duplicated name warning in ClockTick.
  • Fixes the Ubuntu 18.04 Dockerfile to use Python3 instead of Python2.
  • Makes verify.py compatible with Python3.
  • Fixes GCN3_X86 builds for aarch64 hosts.
  • Fixes building with SLICC_HTML=True.
  • Fixes the cpt_upgrader.py string formatter.
  • Fixes typo in cpy_upgrader.py where module errno was incorrectly put as ennro.
  • Sets the --restore-simpoint-checkpoint flag default to "False" instead of the ambiguous "None".
  • Fixes a nonsensical check in MOESI_CMP_token-L1cache which caused compilation bugs in Clang-11.
  • Fixes the scx_get_parameter_list for ARM fast models.
  • Fixes bloated object binaries, known to cause issues during linking.
  • Due to LTO causing unacceptably long link times for some users, and stripping debug symbols in some setups, it is no longer enabled by default. It may be enabled with the --with-lto flag. The --no-lto flag has been removed.

Version 21.0.0.0

Version 21.0 marks one full year of gem5 releases, and on this anniversary, I think we have some of the biggest new features yet! This has been a very productive release with 100 issues, over 813 commits, and 49 unique contributors.

21.0 New features

AMBA CHI protocol implemented in SLICC: Contributed by Tiago Mück

This new protocol provides a single cache controller that can be reused at multiple levels of the cache hierarchy and configured to model multiple instances of MESI and MOESI cache coherency protocols. This implementation is based of Arm’s AMBA 5 CHI specification and provides a scalable framework for the design space exploration of large SoC designs.

See the gem5 documentation for more details. There is also a gem5 blog post on this new protocol as well.

Full support for AMD's GCN3 GPU model

In previous releases, this model was only partially supported. As of gem5 21.0, this model has been fully integrated and is tested nightly. This model currently only works in syscall emulation mode and requires using the gcn docker container to get the correct version of the ROCm stack. More information can be found in this blog post.

With this full support, we are also providing many applications as well. See gem5-resources for more information.

RISC-V Full system Linux boot support: Contributed by Peter Yuen

The RISC-V model in gem5 can now boot unmodified Linux! Additionally, we have implemented DTB generation and support the Berkeley Boot Loader as the stage 1 boot loader. We have also released a set of resources for you to get started: https://gem5.googlesource.com/public/gem5-resources/+/refs/heads/develop/src/riscv-fs/

New/Changed APIs

There are multiple places where the developers have reduced boilerplate.

  • [API CHANGE]: No more create() functions! Previously, every SimObject required a <SimObjectParams>::create() function to be manually defined. Forgetting to do this resulted in confusing errors. Now, this function is created for you automatically. You can still override it if you need to handle any special cases.
  • [API CHANGE]: params(): Rather than defining a typedef and the params() function for every SimObject, you can now use the PARAMS macro.

See http://doxygen.gem5.org/release/current/classSimObject.html#details for more details on these two API changes.

  • [API CHANGE]: All stats are now using new style groups instead of the older manual stat interface.
    • The previous API (creating stats that are not part of a Group) is still supported, but it is now deprecated.
    • If a stat is not created with the new Group API, it may not be automatically dumped using new stat APIs (e.g., the Python API).
    • Next release, there will be a warning for all old-style stats.

Platforms no longer support

  • [USER-FACING CHANGE]: Python 2.7 is no longer supported. You must use Python 3.6+.
  • CLANG minimum version is now 3.9
  • Bump minimum C++ to C++14

Other improvements and new features

  • Extra options to build m5ops
  • m5term improvements
  • There is a new python-based library for handling statistics. This library works, but hasn't been thoroughly tested yet. Stay tuned for more on this next release.
  • Many improvements and additions to unit tests
  • Cleaning up the StaticInst type
  • Workload API changes
  • Many updates and changes to the m5 guest utility
  • Support for running arm64 Linux kernel v5.8
  • Arm SCMI implemented

Version 20.1.0.5

[HOTFIX] This hotfix release fixes three known bugs:

  • src/python/m5/util/convert.py incorrectly stated kibibytes as 'kiB' instead of 'KiB'. This has been fixed.
  • Atomic accesses were not checking the access permission bits in the page table descriptors. They were incorrectly using the nature of the request itself. This is now fixed.
  • num_l2chaches_per_cluster and num_cpus_per_cluster were cast to floats in configs/ruby/MESI_Three_Level_HTM.py, which caused errors. This has been fixed so they are correctly cast to integers.

Version 20.1.0.4

[HOTFIX] gem5 was failing to build with SCons 4.0.1 and 4.1.0. This hotfix makes the necessary changes to site_scons/site_tools/default.py for gem5 to compile successfully on these versions of SCons.

Version 20.1.0.3

[HOTFIX] A patch was apply to fix an error where booting Linux stalled when using the ARM ISA. This fix adds the parameter have_vhe to enable FEAT_VHE on demand, and is disabled by default to resolve this issue.

Version 20.1.0.2

[HOTFIX] This hotfix release fixes known two bugs:

  • A "ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base..." error was being thrown in certain circumstances due to a non-integer being passed to "MemorySize" via a division operation. This has been rectified.
  • An assertion in Stats could be triggered due to a name collision between two ThreadStateStats objects, due to both erroneously sharing the same ThreadID. This has been fixed.

Version 20.1.0.1

[HOTFIX] A patch was applied to fix the Garnet network interface stats. Previously, the flit source delay was computed using both tick and cycles. This bug affected the overall behavior of the Garnet Network Model.

Version 20.1.0.0

Thank you to everyone that made this release possible! This has been a very productive release with 150 issues, over 650 commits (a 25% increase from the 20.0 release), and 58 unique contributors (a 100% increase!).

Process changes

We are no longer using the "master" branch. Instead, we will have two branches:

  • "stable": This will point to the latest stable release (gem5-20.1 as of today)
  • "develop": This is the latest development code that will be merged in to the "stable" branch at each release.

We suggest all users use the stable (default) branch. However, to contribute your fixes and new changes to gem5, it should be contributed to the develop branch. See CONTRIBUTING.md for more details.

gem5 has also implemented a project code of conduct. See the CODE-OF-CONDUCT.md file for details. In the code of conduct "we pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community."

New features in 20.1

New DRAM interface: Contributed by Wendy Elsasser

You can find details about this on the gem5 blog or Wendy's talks on YouTube: Talk on new interface and NVM and the talk on LPDDR5

  • [PYTHON API CHANGE]: The DRAM models are now DRAM interfaces which is a child of the memory controller. Example change shown in the blog post.
    • The DRAM is split into a memory controller and a DRAM interface
    • SimpleMemory is no longer a drop-in replacement for a DRAM-based memory controller.
  • LPDDR5 model added
  • NVM model added
  • New memory controller model that can use both NVM and DRAM

Improved on-chip interconnect model, HeteroGarnet: Contributed by Srikant Bharadwaj

You can find details about this on the gem5 blog and Srikant's talk on YouTube.

  • [USER-FACING CHANGE]: The network type options are now "simple" and "garnet" instead of "garnet2.0". (If "garnet2.0" is used, you will get a warning until gem5-20.2)
  • Added models for clock domain crossings and serialization/deserialization (SERDES)

Transactional memory support: Contributed by Timothy Hayes

You can find details on the Jira issue

  • gem5 now supports Arm TME (transactional memory extensions)
  • Transactional memory is only implemented in the MESI_Three_Level_HTM Ruby protocol, and it is only implemented in Ruby.
  • This implements a checkpointing mechanism for the architectural state and buffering of speculative memory updates.
  • IBM POWER and x86 HTM extensions have not been implemented.

Other new features

  • External simulator integrations
    • Added support for DRAMSim3
    • Added back support for DRAMSim2
  • Armv8-A Self Hosted Debug extension added
  • KVM support for Armv8-A hosts without GICv2 hardware
  • Implemented Secure EL2 for Armv8-A

Removed features

  • Dropped support for mercurial version control

New supported platforms

  • GCC up to 10.2 is now supported. Minimum GCC is now 5.0.
  • Clang up to version 9. Minimum Clang is now 3.9.

Platforms no longer support

  • [USER-FACING CHANGE]: Python 2 is officially deprecated. We will drop support for Python 2 in the next release. In this release you will get a warning if you're using Python 2.
  • [USER-FACING CHANGE]: We have dropped support for GCC 4.X
  • [USER-FACING CHANGE]: We have dropped support for Scons 2.x (Note: this is the default in Ubuntu 16.04. Use pip to install a newer scons.)

See http://www.gem5.org/documentation/general_docs/building for gem5's current dependencies.

Other changes

Deprecating "master" and "slave"

  • [API CHANGE]: The names "master" and "slave" have been deprecated
    • Special thanks to Lakin Smith, Shivani Parekh, Eden Avivi, and Emily Brickey.
    • Below is a guide to most of the name changes.
    • The goal was to replace problematic language with more descriptive and precise terms.
  • There may be some bugs introduced with this change as there were many places in the Python configurations which relied on "duck typing".
  • This change is mostly backwards compatible and warning will be issued until at least gem5-20.2.
MasterPort -> RequestorPort
SlavePort -> ResponsePort

xbar.slave -> xbar.cpu_side
xbar.master -> xbar.mem_side

MasterId -> RequestorId

Testing improvements

  • We now have Jenkins server (http://jenkins.gem5.org/) running nightly and other large tests. Special thanks to Mike Upton for setting this up!
    • Nightly tests run the "long" regression tests (many tests added).
    • Compiler tests run gem5 build for many targets and all compilers once a week.
  • Updated CI tester (kokoro) to use a more up-to-date environment.
  • Improved the testing infrastructure.
    • Almost all testing resources now available in gem5-resources repository.
    • Generally cleaned up the tests/ directory in mainline gem5.
    • Many general testlib improvements.

More changes

Version 20.0.0.3

[HOTFIX] When using the ARM ISA, gem5 could crash when a guest tried to call m5ops. This was due to m5ops_base being incorrectly declared in src/arch/arm/ArmSystem.py. A fix was applied to remove this declaration.

Version 20.0.0.2

[HOTFIX] A patch was applied to fix the RubyPrefetcher with MESI_Three_Level. Prior to this fix a segfault occurred.

Version 20.0.0.1

[HOTFIX] A fix was applied to stop incorrect clock frequences being reported due to rounding errors.

Version 20.0.0.0

Welcome to our first "official" gem5 release! gem5 v19.0.0.0 was a "test" release, but this one has release notes, so it must be official!

Thank you to everyone that made this release possible! This has been a very productive release with over 70 issues closed, over 500 commits, and 31 unique contributors. Below are some of the highlights, though I'm sure I've missed some important changes.

New features

  • gem5-resources repository
    • This new repository will store all of the sources (e.g., code) used to create testing and research resources. This includes disk images, testing binaries, kernel binaries, etc.
    • Binaries created with the sources are hosted on dist.gem5.org.
    • Details on the new page for resources: http://www.gem5.org/documentation/general_docs/gem5_resources.
  • Memory SimObjects can now be initialized using an image file using the image_file parameter.
  • [USER-FACING CHANGE] The m5 utility has been revamped with a new build system based on scons, tests, and updated and more consistent feature support.
    • To build, now use scons build/<arch>/out/m5, not make.
    • Documentation coming soon.
  • Robust support for marshalling data from a function call inside the simulation to a function within gem5 using a predefined set of rules.
    • Developers can specify an ABI for guest<->simulator calls and then "just call functions".
    • Unifies pseudo-inst, syscall, and other support.
    • Code within gem5 has been updated. However, users which added new pseudo-ops may have to update their code.
  • [PYTHON API CHANGE] Workload configuration pulled out into its own object, simplifying the System object and making workload configuration more modular and flexible.
  • Sv39 paging has been added to the RISC-V ISA, bringing gem5 close to running Linux on RISC-V.
    • (Some) Baremetal OSes are now supported.
  • Improvements to DRAM model:
    • Added support for verifying available command bandwidth.
    • Added support for multi-cycle commands.
    • Added new timing parameters.
    • Added ability to interleave bursts.
    • Added LPDDR5 configurations.
  • [Developer change] We are beginning to document gem5 APIs.
    • Currently, only SimObjects and the APIs they depend on have been documented.
    • We are using doxygen to mark "stable APIs" and will use manual code review to make sure the APIs stay stable.
    • More information will be coming during gem5-20.1 development.

Removed features

  • Support for the ALPHA ISA has been dropped.
    • All ALPHA ISA code has been removed
    • Old "rcS" scripts for ALPHA have been removed

New supported platforms

  • Compiling and running gem5 with Python 3 is now fully supported.
    • Lots of code changes required for this.
    • There may still be some python code that's not up to date. Please open a Jira ticket if you find any code that doesn't work with python3.
  • gem5 now supports Ubuntu 20.04.
  • Compiling gem5 with GCC 8 and 9 is now supported.
  • Compiling with clang up to version 9 is now supported.

Testing improvements

  • Scons-based tests have been migrated to the testlib framework.
    • Tests can now be run with tests/main.py, except for the unittests.
    • Please consult TESTING.md for more information on how these may be run.
  • We are continuing to work on CI tests. Most of the plumbing is there for Google Cloud Build integration. See the Jira issue for details.

Other API changes

  • [API CHANGE] Ruby's prefetcher renamed to RubyPrefetcher.
    • Any SLICC protocols with prefetchers need to be updated.
    • Some config scripts for Ruby protocols with prefetchers may need to be updated.
  • [API CHANGE] SE mode improvements.
    • Better support for the mmap and related syscalls.
    • A new virtual memory area API for tracking SE mode allocations.
    • When implementing syscalls, the way that guest memory is allocated changes. All code in gem5 is updated, but if there are any external syscalls, they may need be updated.
  • [COMMAND LINE CHANGE] The --disk-image argument to fs.py is now optional.
    • However, the disk image names are no longer implied.
    • The script still implicitly searches M5_PATH, but the name of the disk image must be specified.
  • [API CHANGE] SLICC queueMemory is now enqueue.
    • All protocol configs must be updated with another message buffer in the memory controllers (directories).
    • All protocol SLICC files must replace queueMemoryRead and queueMemoryWrite with enqueue to another "special" message buffer named memQueue.
    • This allows finite buffering between the cache controllers and DRAMCtrl.
  • [API CHANGE] Added Prefetcher namespace
    • All prefetchers' names have changed from *Prefetcher to Prefetcher::*
    • If you have any prefetchers that are not in the gem5 mainline, your code will likely need to be updated.

Other changes

  • Implemented ARMv8.3-CompNum, SIMD complex number extension.
  • Support for Arm Trusted Firmware + u-boot with the new VExpress_GEM5_Foundation platform
  • Removed author list from source files.
    • This was originally so future people would know who to contact.
    • However, it was difficult to maintain and quickly out of date.
    • Copyright is unchanged.
  • Improvements to gem5's power model.
  • MESI_Three_Level Ruby protocol bugfixes.
  • Ruby functional reads now work in more cases.
  • Indirect branch stats work correctly now.