Re: [PATCH v2 00/17] x86/resctrl : Support AMD Assignable Bandwidth Monitoring Counters (ABMC)

["Moger, Babu" <babu.moger@amd.com>]

Hi Peter,

On 2/27/24 12:26, Peter Newman wrote:
> Hi Babu,
> 
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 10:12 AM Moger, Babu <babu.moger@amd.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 2/26/24 15:20, Reinette Chatre wrote:
>>>
>>> For example, if I understand correctly, theoretically, when ABMC is enabled then
>>> "num_rmids" can be U32_MAX (after a quick look it is not clear to me why r->num_rmid
>>> is not unsigned, tbd if number of directories may also be limited by kernfs).
>>> User space could theoretically create more monitor groups than the number of
>>> rmids that a resource claims to support using current upstream enumeration.
>>
>> CPU or task association still uses PQR_ASSOC(MSR C8Fh). There are only 11
>> bits(depends on specific h/w) to represent RMIDs. So, we cannot create
>> more than this limit(r->num_rmid).
>>
>> In case of ABMC, h/w uses another counter(mbm_assignable_counters) with
>> RMID to assign the monitoring. So, assignment limit is
>> mbm_assignable_counters. The number of mon groups limit is still r->num_rmid.
> 
> That is not entirely true. As long as you don't need to maintain
> bandwidth counts for unassigned monitoring groups, there's no need to
> allocate a HW RMID to a monitoring group.

We don't need to allocate a h/w counter for unassigned group.
My proposal is to allocate h/w counter only if user requests a assignment.
 The limit for assigned events at time is mbm_assignable_counters(32 right
now).

> 
> In my soft-ABMC prototype, where a limited number of HW RMIDs are
> allocated to assigned monitoring groups, I was forced to replace the
> HW RMID value stored in the task_struct to a pointer to the struct
> mongroup, since the RMID value assigned to the mongroup would
> frequently change, resulting in excessive walks down the tasklist to
> find all of the tasks using the previous value.
> 
> However, the number of hardware monitor group identifiers supported
> (i.e., RMID, PARTID:PMG) is usually high enough that I don't think
> there's much motivation to support unlimited monitoring groups. In
> both soft-RMID and soft-ABMC, I didn't bother supporting more groups
> than num_rmids, because the number was large enough.

What is soft-ABMC?

-- 
Thanks
Babu Moger