From sac-owner Mon Jun 23 17:45:27 2008 Received: from sunmail5.uk.sun.com (sunmail5.UK.Sun.COM [129.156.85.165]) by sac.sfbay.sun.com (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m5O0jQaI022927 for ; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:45:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sunmail5.uk.sun.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sunmail5.uk.sun.com (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8/ENSMAIL,v2.2) with ESMTP id m5O0jPAP020718 for ; Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:45:25 +0100 (BST) Received: (from noaccess@localhost) by sunmail5.uk.sun.com (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8/Submit) id m5O0jPnx020717 for one-pager-not-2b-used-directly; Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:45:25 +0100 (BST) Received: from nwk-avmta-1.SFBay.Sun.COM (nwk-avmta-1.SFBay.Sun.COM [129.146.11.74]) by sunmail5.uk.sun.com (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8/ENSMAIL,v2.2) with ESMTP id m5O0jKot020675; Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:45:25 +0100 (BST) Received: from pmxchannel-daemon.nwk-avmta-1.sfbay.Sun.COM by nwk-avmta-1.sfbay.Sun.COM (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-3.04 (built Jul 15 2005)) id <0K2X00C01ZFNH600@nwk-avmta-1.sfbay.Sun.COM>; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:45:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from uask4it.sfbay.sun.com ([10.7.80.228]) by nwk-avmta-1.sfbay.Sun.COM (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-3.04 (built Jul 15 2005)) with ESMTP id <0K2X00A3GZFNF410@nwk-avmta-1.sfbay.Sun.COM>; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:45:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dhcp-usca11-234-234.SFBay.Sun.COM (dhcp-usca11-234-234.SFBay.Sun.COM [129.145.234.234]) by uask4it.sfbay.sun.com (8.13.7+Sun/8.13.7) with ESMTP id m5O0jCfM002284; Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:45:12 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:45:22 -0700 From: Richard Barnette Subject: [2008/398]Hypervisor API for Transactional Memory Configuration To: one-pager@Sun.Com Cc: rs-staff Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.924) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-PMX-Version: 5.4.1.325704 Status: RO Content-Length: 4718 Template Version: @(#)onepager.txt 1.35 07/11/07 SMI Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems 1. Introduction 1.1. Project/Component Working Name: Hypervisor API for Transactional Memory Configuration 1.2. Name of Document Author/Supplier: Richard.Barnette@sun.com 1.3. Date of This Document: 06/23/08 1.3.1. Date this project was conceived: 02/28/08 1.4. Name of Major Document Customer(s)/Consumer(s): 1.4.1. The PAC or CPT you expect to review your project: N/A 1.4.2. The ARC(s) you expect to review your project: FWARC 1.4.3. The Director/VP who is "Sponsoring" this project: Ravi.Subbarao@sun.com 1.4.4. The name of your business unit: Systems 1.5. Email Aliases: 1.5.1. Responsible Manager: Umesh.Sharma@sun.com 1.5.2. Responsible Engineer: Richard.Barnette@sun.com 1.5.3. Marketing Manager: 1.5.4. Interest List: us-staff@sun.com 2. Project Summary 2.1. Project Description: This project adds an API to the hypervisor to support processors that provide hardware Transactional Memory. 2.2. Risks and Assumptions: This project requires a processor that implements Transactional Memory, and the processor is expected to provide the ability to enable or disable the feature. 3. Business Summary Future UltraSPARC based systems will support Transactional Memory (TM) capabilities. TM is a revolutionary new processor capability that can simultaneously simplify the programming of multi-threaded application programs and provide dramatic performance improvements. 3.1. Problem Area: TM provides a greatly simplified programming model, but it brings with it a new challenge: that of testing and debugging transaction failure handlers. The new API provides the ability to perform such testing, without requiring applications to be recompiled for the testing. 3.2. Market/Requester: The primary consumers of the API will be internal developers developing transactional memory based library functions, and similar application level code that uses TM. Third party developers learning to use TM may also benefit from the capability. 3.3. Business Justification: 3.4. Competitive Analysis: 3.5. Opportunity Window/Exposure: 3.6. How will you know when you are done?: The project is done when the API is implemented as specified on hardware that supports the underlying capability. 4. Technical Description: 4.1. Details: The project adds a single Hypervisor API function that will allow a guest operating system to enable or disable TM capabilities on the calling virtual CPU. When disabled, TM specific instructions will be treated as legal, but transactions started by the affected CPU will always fail. Disabling TM allows software that contains transactions to test the transaction failure code paths. Because these failure code paths are meant to be rarely executed by design, they cannot always be easily tested. Providing a disable allows for more thorough testing. 4.2. Bug/RFE Number(s): 4.3. In Scope: 4.4. Out of Scope: 4.5. Interfaces: 4.5.1. Imported Interfaces: N/A 4.5.2. Exported Interfaces: Interface Classification Comments ==================================================================== TM_GROUP Committed API group TM_ENABLE Committed API call 4.6. Doc Impact: N/A 4.7. Admin/Config Impact: N/A 4.8. HA Impact: N/A 4.9. I18N/L10N Impact: N/A 4.10. Packaging & Delivery: N/A 4.11. Security Impact: N/A 4.12. Dependencies: N/A 5. Reference Documents: N/A 6. Resources and Schedule: 6.1. Projected Availability: 6.2. Cost of Effort: 6.3. Cost of Capital Resources: 6.4. Product Approval Committee requested information: 6.4.1. Consolidation or Component Name: 6.4.3. Type of CPT Review and Approval expected: 6.4.4. Project Boundary Conditions: 6.4.5. Is this a necessary project for OEM agreements: No 6.4.6. Notes: 6.4.7. Target RTI Date/Release: 6.4.8. Target Code Design Review Date: 6.4.9. Update approval addition: 6.5. ARC review type: Standard 6.6. ARC Exposure: open 6.6.1. Rationale: 7. Prototype Availability: 7.1. Prototype Availability: 7.2. Prototype Cost: -- Richard Barnette | Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Sun Microsystems | Old Time is still a-flying: Enterprise Systems Software | And this same flower that smiles to-day SCA11 2384 / USCA11-205 | To-morrow will be dying. (408) 276-7541 / x17541 | -- Robert Herrick . | "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"