Impact: implement new performance feature
Counter inheritance can be used to run performance counters in a workload,
transparently - and pipe back the counter results to the parent counter.
Inheritance for performance counters works the following way: when creating
a counter it can be marked with the .inherit=1 flag. Such counters are then
'inherited' by all child tasks (be they fork()-ed or clone()-ed). These
counters get inherited through exec() boundaries as well (except through
setuid boundaries).
The counter values get added back to the parent counter(s) when the child
task(s) exit - much like stime/utime statistics are gathered. So inherited
counters are ideal to gather summary statistics about an application's
behavior via shell commands, without having to modify that application.
The timec.c command utilizes counter inheritance:
http://redhat.com/~mingo/perfcounters/timec.c
Sample output:
$ ./timec -e 1 -e 3 -e 5 ls -lR /usr/include/ >/dev/null
Performance counter stats for 'ls':
163516953 instructions
2295 cache-misses
2855182 branch-misses
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: restructure code
Change counter math from absolute values to clear delta logic.
We try to extract elapsed deltas from the raw hw counter - and put
that into the generic counter.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: cleanup
Introduce a proper enum for the 3 states of a counter:
PERF_COUNTER_STATE_OFF = -1
PERF_COUNTER_STATE_INACTIVE = 0
PERF_COUNTER_STATE_ACTIVE = 1
and rename counter->active to counter->state and propagate the
changes everywhere.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Add a way for self-monitoring tasks to disable/enable counters summarily,
via a prctl:
PR_TASK_PERF_COUNTERS_DISABLE 31
PR_TASK_PERF_COUNTERS_ENABLE 32
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: add new perf-counter type
The 'task clock' counter counts the amount of time a task is executing,
in nanoseconds. It stops ticking when a task is scheduled out either due
to it blocking, sleeping or it being preempted.
This counter type is a Linux kernel based abstraction, it is available
even if the hardware does not support native hardware performance counters.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: cleanup
Rename them to better match up the usual IRQ disable/enable APIs:
hw_perf_disable_all() => hw_perf_save_disable()
hw_perf_restore_ctrl() => hw_perf_restore()
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: add new perf-counter type
The 'CPU clock' counter counts the amount of CPU clock time that is
elapsing, in nanoseconds. (regardless of how much of it the task is
spending on a CPU executing)
This counter type is a Linux kernel based abstraction, it is available
even if the hardware does not support native hardware performance counters.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: restructure code, introduce hw_ops driver abstraction
Introduce this abstraction to handle counter details:
struct hw_perf_counter_ops {
void (*hw_perf_counter_enable) (struct perf_counter *counter);
void (*hw_perf_counter_disable) (struct perf_counter *counter);
void (*hw_perf_counter_read) (struct perf_counter *counter);
};
This will be useful to support assymetric hw details, and it will also
be useful to implement "software counters". (Counters that count kernel
managed sw events such as pagefaults, context-switches, wall-clock time
or task-local time.)
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: bugfix
Check that a group does not span outside the context of a CPU or a task.
Also, do not allow deep recursive hierarchies.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: add group counters
This patch adds the "counter groups" abstraction.
Groups of counters behave much like normal 'single' counters, with a
few semantic and behavioral extensions on top of that.
A counter group is created by creating a new counter with the open()
syscall's group-leader group_fd file descriptor parameter pointing
to another, already existing counter.
Groups of counters are scheduled in and out in one atomic group, and
they are also roundrobin-scheduled atomically.
Counters that are member of a group can also record events with an
(atomic) extended timestamp that extends to all members of the group,
if the record type is set to PERF_RECORD_GROUP.
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: clean up new API
Thorough cleanup of the new perf counters API, we now get clean separation
of the various concepts:
- introduce perf_counter_hw_event to separate out the event source details
- move special type flags into separate attributes: PERF_COUNT_NMI,
PERF_COUNT_RAW
- extend the type to u64 and reserve it fully to the architecture in the
raw type case.
And make use of all these changes in the core and x86 perfcounters code.
Also change the syscall signature to:
asmlinkage int sys_perf_counter_open(
struct perf_counter_hw_event *hw_event_uptr __user,
pid_t pid,
int cpu,
int group_fd);
( Note that group_fd is unused for now - it's reserved for the counter
groups abstraction. )
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Impact: change syscall, cleanup
Make use of the new perf_counters event type.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Implement the core kernel bits of Performance Counters subsystem.
The Linux Performance Counter subsystem provides an abstraction of
performance counter hardware capabilities. It provides per task and per
CPU counters, and it provides event capabilities on top of those.
Performance counters are accessed via special file descriptors.
There's one file descriptor per virtual counter used.
The special file descriptor is opened via the perf_counter_open()
system call:
int
perf_counter_open(u32 hw_event_type,
u32 hw_event_period,
u32 record_type,
pid_t pid,
int cpu);
The syscall returns the new fd. The fd can be used via the normal
VFS system calls: read() can be used to read the counter, fcntl()
can be used to set the blocking mode, etc.
Multiple counters can be kept open at a time, and the counters
can be poll()ed.
See more details in Documentation/perf-counters.txt.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
