Goals
The purpose of this lab is to acquaint you with the structure and workings of the virtual memory system. You will work with two different simulators to develop this understanding.
The Lab Files
...There are none! LOL GOTCHA
Info
For this lab you will be mostly using the virtual memory simulation features of
a random program that someone hacked up called "Camera": a cache and virtual memory simulator. You may also find the cache
simulations interesting, however we won't be working with those here.
Unfortunately, Camera is known to have issues when trying to run it on the instructional
machines, so it's recommand to download Camera from here, and simply double click
on the jar file to run it on your own laptop.
Note: you MUST have Java installed first.
Hint: If you don't want to bother with installing Java, find a partner who does have Camera working to work with!
Once Camera opens up, select the virtual memory option to open a visualization of the virtual memory system.
- In the top left you can see the contents of physical memory.
- Just below that is a listing of all the pages of virtual memory for this process.
- To the right of these items are the contents of the TLB and the Page Table.
Exercises
Exercise 1: A Random String of Memory Accesses
Click the button labeled "Auto Generate Add. Ref. Str." at the right-hand side of the window. This will generate a set of ten address references. You can think of these as a series of MIPS "load" instructions reading from the memory address specified. Click the button labeled "Next" to begin the simulation.
For the rest of this exercise you are at the mercy of the "PROGRESS UPDATE" box. After each click of the "Next" button examine the contents of the box and the current state of the memory system. Try to reeeaaaaally get an understanding of what is going on in the TLB, the Page Table, and Physical Memory at each step.
Checkoff [1/4] (Don't worry, they're short)
- When describing the process of one memory access, you should have had to press the "next" key exactly six (6) times. Run through a single memory access with the person checking you off. Before you press the "next" button, describe exactly what is going on IN YOUR OWN WORDS.
Exercise 2: How to exhibit bad spatial locality
Now that you've seen what a random workload looks like in the VM system
let's try creating a custom workload with a specific property.
Task:Your goal for this exercise is to create a workload of ten memory accesses that
will cause ten TLB misses and ten Page Faults.
Think: When do you get TLB misses? How can you engineer your memory accesses so that
this never happens?
You should be able to come up with such a workload on paper, but then you should run it in
CAMERA to verify your work. You can specify a custom workload in CAMERA
by clicking the button labeled "Self Generate Add. Ref. Str." and
entering in the addresses you want to reference one at a time. When you
are satisfied that you've got a valid sequence write it down and be
ready to show it to your TA during checkoff.
Checkoff [2/4]
- Show your TA a workload of ten memory accesses that will cause ten TLB misses and ten Page Faults. Explain exactly how you chose these ten (10) memory addresses.
Exercise 3: Memory Systems Engineering (CAMERA)
Given your sequence of memory accesses from Exercises 2, can you find a change to a single parameter (e.g. TLB size, page table size, memory size, etc...) that would result in the same number (ten) of TLB misses but result in fewer than ten page faults?
Checkoff [3/4]
- Explain the single parameter change that would result in ten TLB misses, but fewer than ten page faults. Why would this change things?
Exercise 3.5: The FINAL Break
First of all, here are some cool cat videos that I stumbled across yesterday.
Let's find out what happened in that story from last time.
After having told my GENIUS lie to my dad, I proceeded to not practice piano for
the entire day. Everything was all going fine until my grandma asked the most innocent
question: "How come Alex isn't practicing piano today?"
You can probably guess what happened next. Out of that whirlwind of emotions, I distinctly remember
two things.
- My dad remarking (in Chinese): "...and you said you practiced everything twice"
- My dad sitting down next to me with a notepad, writing down what happened, and then drawing an arrow pointing to the right, as if to say, "Where do we go from here?"
That's a nontrivial question if I've ever heard one. Where do you go after you betray someone's trust like I did? I think I was either 5 or 6 years old at the time, and it was the first time I ever remember lying to someone and getting caught. It felt awful. Without looking up anything, I can tell you with absolute confidence the reason getting caught lying and lying in general feels bad is because it is human nature to want to be trusted. And when you lie and get caught, you feel that volume of trust that people have in you trickling away.
The following are things I want people to believe:
- You should never lie.
- You should never lie to others. Honesty is the most important enabler of a good relationship between people.
- You should never lie to yourself. Be honest about what things you like, what things you want, what things you don't like. I find that prioritizing honesty makes making decisions much easier.
- You should always forgive.
- Just like my dad forgave me!
Sometimes, I wonder, had this episode never happened in my life, if I would still feel so strongly about being honest. I challenge you all, not now, but maybe over the weekend, to recall an important episode of your life that you found meaningful and you think you developed a lot as a person from.
Exercise 4: Putting it all in Context
Watch this gif of the simulation, and answer the questions using it.
HINT: This animation is too fast for anyone to follow! If you agree, click on this link to look at the .gif as a slideshow instead.
What is different about the setup of VMSIM as compared to CAMERA? In particular, what are P1, P2, P3, and P4? If you watch closely you'll see that this simulation reports a much higher percentage of TLB misses than the random run on CAMERA did. Why might this be? (If you have trouble following the simulation, you can turn down the speed using the slider on the bottom right.)
Checkoff [4/4]
- Explain why there is a much higher percentage of TLB misses in this simulation.
End of the road...
