Re: [patch] Performance Counters for Linux, v4

From: Paul Mackerras
Date: Mon Dec 15 2008 - 07:11:59 EST


Ingo Molnar writes:

> We are pleased to announce the v4 release of our performance counters
> subsystem implementation.

Looking at the code, I am wondering what you are planning to do to
support machines that have constraints on what sets of events can be
counted simultaneously. Currently you have the core code calling
counter->hw_ops->hw_perf_counter_enable which can't return an error.
The core expects it to be able to add any counter regardless of what
event it's counting, subject only to a maximum number of counters.
I assume you're going to change that.

I think the core should put together a list of counters and counter
groups that it would like to have on the PMU simultaneously and then
make one call to the arch layer to ask if that is possible. That
could either return success or failure. If it returns failure then
the core needs to ask for something less, or something different. I'm
not sure how the core should choose what to ask for instead, though.

Paul.
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