Re: [PATCH v11 23/31] x86/resctrl: Handle number of RMIDs supported by telemetry resources

[Reinette Chatre <reinette.chatre@intel.com>]

Hi Tony,

(nit in subject ... "resources" -> "resource" ... with caveat that
the term "telemetry resource" is not used much at all in this series)

On 9/25/25 1:03 PM, Tony Luck wrote:
> There are now three meanings for "number of RMIDs":
> 
> 1) The number for legacy features enumerated by CPUID leaf 0xF. This
> is the maximum number of distinct values that can be loaded into the
> IA32_PQR_ASSOC MSR. Note that systems with Sub-NUMA Cluster mode enabled

"the IA32_PQR_ASSOC MSR" -> "MSR_IA32_PQR_ASSOC"

> will force scaling down the CPUID enumerated value by the number of SNC
> nodes per L3-cache.
> 
> 2) The number of registers in MMIO space for each event. This
> is enumerated in the XML files and is the value initialized into
> event_group::num_rmids.
> 
> 3) The number of "hardware counters" (this isn't a strictly accurate
> description of how things work, but serves as a useful analogy that
> does describe the limitations) feeding to those MMIO registers. This
> is enumerated in telemetry_region::num_rmids returned from the call to
> intel_pmt_get_regions_by_feature()
> 
> Event groups with insufficient "hardware counters" to track all RMIDs
> are difficult for users to use, since the system may reassign "hardware
> counters" at any time. This means that users cannot reliably collect
> two consecutive event counts to compute the rate at which events are
> occurring.
> 
> Introduce rdt_set_feature_disabled() to mark any under-resourced event
> groups (those with telemetry_region::num_rmids < event_group::num_rmids)

Would it be more accurate to say
"(those with telemetry_region::num_rmids < event_group::num_rmids for any
  of the event group's telemetry regions)"

> as unusable.  Note that the rdt_options[] structure must now be writable
> at run-time.  The request to disable will be overridden if the user

"Override the request ..."?

> explicitly requests to enable using the "rdt=" Linux boot argument.
> This will result in the available number of monitoring resource groups
> being limited by the under-resourced event groups.

needs imperative ... how about something like (for text starting with "The
request to disable ..."):
	Limit an event group's number of possible monitor resource groups
	to the lowest number of "hardware counters" if the user explicitly
	requests to enable an under-resourced event group.

...


> @@ -156,21 +168,57 @@ static void mark_telem_region_unusable(struct telemetry_region *tr)
>  	tr->addr = NULL;
>  }
>  
> +static bool all_regions_have_sufficient_rmid(struct event_group *e, struct pmt_feature_group *p)
> +{
> +	struct telemetry_region *tr;
> +
> +	for (int i = 0; i < p->count; i++) {
> +		tr = &p->regions[i];
> +		if (skip_telem_region(tr, e))
> +			continue;
> +
> +		if (tr->num_rmids < e->num_rmids)
> +			return false;
> +	}
> +
> +	return true;
> +}
> +
>  static bool enable_events(struct event_group *e, struct pmt_feature_group *p)
>  {
> +	struct rdt_resource *r = &rdt_resources_all[RDT_RESOURCE_PERF_PKG].r_resctrl;
>  	bool usable_events = false;
>  
> +	/* Disable feature if insufficient RMIDs */
> +	if (!all_regions_have_sufficient_rmid(e, p))
> +		rdt_set_feature_disabled(e->name);
> +
> +	/* User can override above disable from kernel command line */
> +	if (!rdt_is_feature_enabled(e->name))
> +		return false;
> +
>  	for (int i = 0; i < p->count; i++) {
>  		if (skip_telem_region(&p->regions[i], e)) {
>  			mark_telem_region_unusable(&p->regions[i]);
>  			continue;
>  		}

It is unexpected to me that skip_telem_region() needs to be run twice with
second time marking regions as unusable. I think it will be simpler to just run
skip_telem_region() once to determine which telemetry regions are unusable, mark them as
such at that time, and from that point forward just interact with the usable telemetry
regions?

> +
> +		/*
> +		 * e->num_rmids only adjusted lower if user forces an unusable
> +		 * region to be usable

In this function usable/unusable regions have a distinct meaning that is different
from what this comment intends since insufficient rmid does not make a region
"unusable" per skip_telem_region(). Perhaps something like:
	e->num_rmids only adjusted lower if user (via rdt= kernel parameter) forces
	an event group with insufficient RMID to be enabled.

Reinette