From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754814Ab3LROLp (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Dec 2013 09:11:45 -0500 Received: from merlin.infradead.org ([205.233.59.134]:47779 "EHLO merlin.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753243Ab3LROLo (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Dec 2013 09:11:44 -0500 Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2013 15:11:25 +0100 From: Peter Zijlstra To: Alexander Shishkin Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo , Ingo Molnar , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, David Ahern , Frederic Weisbecker , Jiri Olsa , Mike Galbraith , Namhyung Kim , Paul Mackerras , Stephane Eranian , Andi Kleen Subject: Re: [PATCH v0 04/71] itrace: Infrastructure for instruction flow tracing units Message-ID: <20131218141125.GT21999@twins.programming.kicks-ass.net> References: <1386765443-26966-1-git-send-email-alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> <1386765443-26966-5-git-send-email-alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com> <20131217161126.GL13532@twins.programming.kicks-ass.net> <8761qmthr6.fsf@ashishki-desk.ger.corp.intel.com> <20131218133439.GR21999@twins.programming.kicks-ass.net> <8738lqtg0v.fsf@ashishki-desk.ger.corp.intel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <8738lqtg0v.fsf@ashishki-desk.ger.corp.intel.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2012-12-30) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 04:01:04PM +0200, Alexander Shishkin wrote: > > Why don't you start by explaining _why_ you need a second stream to > > begin with? > > Oh, I'm sure I've explained it earlier ([1], [2]) See, I didn't read 0 because that information gets lost and patches should be self explanatory, and i didn't get to the Intel driver yet because well, I got stuck in the generic code. > but why not. The data > in the second stream is generated at a rate which is hundreds of > megabytes per second per core. Decoding this data is ~1000 times slower > than generating it. Ergo, can't be done in kernel, needs to be exported > as-is to userspace for later retreival and decoding. Doing it via perf > stream means an extra copy, which at these rates is a waste. Ergo, a > second buffer. Still confused, if you cannot copy it into one buffer, then why can you copy it into a second buffer?