Re: [PATCH v1 00/22] Switch the default perf stat metrics to json

[Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>]

On Mon, Nov 03, 2025 at 09:09:14PM -0800, Ian Rogers wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 3, 2025 at 8:47 PM Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Ian,
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 24, 2025 at 10:58:35AM -0700, Ian Rogers wrote:
> > > Prior to this series stat-shadow would produce hard coded metrics if
> > > certain events appeared in the evlist. This series produces equivalent
> > > json metrics and cleans up the consequences in tests and display
> > > output. A before and after of the default display output on a
> > > tigerlake is:
> > >
> > > Before:
> > > ```
> > > $ perf stat -a sleep 1
> > >
> > >  Performance counter stats for 'system wide':
> > >
> > >     16,041,816,418      cpu-clock                        #   15.995 CPUs utilized
> > >              5,749      context-switches                 #  358.376 /sec
> > >                121      cpu-migrations                   #    7.543 /sec
> > >              1,806      page-faults                      #  112.581 /sec
> > >        825,965,204      instructions                     #    0.70  insn per cycle
> > >      1,180,799,101      cycles                           #    0.074 GHz
> > >        168,945,109      branches                         #   10.532 M/sec
> > >          4,629,567      branch-misses                    #    2.74% of all branches
> > >  #     30.2 %  tma_backend_bound
> > >                                                   #      7.8 %  tma_bad_speculation
> > >                                                   #     47.1 %  tma_frontend_bound
> > >  #     14.9 %  tma_retiring
> > > ```
> > >
> > > After:
> > > ```
> > > $ perf stat -a sleep 1
> > >
> > >  Performance counter stats for 'system wide':
> > >
> > >              2,890      context-switches                 #    179.9 cs/sec  cs_per_second
> > >     16,061,923,339      cpu-clock                        #     16.0 CPUs  CPUs_utilized
> > >                 43      cpu-migrations                   #      2.7 migrations/sec  migrations_per_second
> > >              5,645      page-faults                      #    351.5 faults/sec  page_faults_per_second
> > >          5,708,413      branch-misses                    #      1.4 %  branch_miss_rate         (88.83%)
> > >        429,978,120      branches                         #     26.8 K/sec  branch_frequency     (88.85%)
> > >      1,626,915,897      cpu-cycles                       #      0.1 GHz  cycles_frequency       (88.84%)
> > >      2,556,805,534      instructions                     #      1.5 instructions  insn_per_cycle  (88.86%)
> > >                         TopdownL1                 #     20.1 %  tma_backend_bound
> > >                                                   #     40.5 %  tma_bad_speculation      (88.90%)
> > >                                                   #     17.2 %  tma_frontend_bound       (78.05%)
> > >                                                   #     22.2 %  tma_retiring             (88.89%)
> > >
> > >        1.002994394 seconds time elapsed
> > > ```
> >
> > While this looks nicer, I worry about the changes in the output.  And I'm
> > curious why only the "After" output shows the multiplexing percent.
> >
> > >
> > > Having the metrics in json brings greater uniformity, allows events to
> > > be shared by metrics, and it also allows descriptions like:
> > > ```
> > > $ perf list cs_per_second
> > > ...
> > >   cs_per_second
> > >        [Context switches per CPU second]
> > > ```
> > >
> > > A thorn in the side of doing this work was that the hard coded metrics
> > > were used by perf script with '-F metric'. This functionality didn't
> > > work for me (I was testing `perf record -e instructions,cycles` and
> > > then `perf script -F metric` but saw nothing but empty lines)
> >
> > The documentation says:
> >
> >         With the metric option perf script can compute metrics for
> >         sampling periods, similar to perf stat. This requires
> >         specifying a group with multiple events defining metrics with the :S option
> >         for perf record. perf will sample on the first event, and
> >         print computed metrics for all the events in the group. Please note
> >         that the metric computed is averaged over the whole sampling
> >         period (since the last sample), not just for the sample point.
> >
> > So I guess it should have 'S' modifiers in a group.
> 
> Thanks Namhyung. Yes, this is the silly behavior where leader sample
> events are both treated as an event but then the constituent parts
> turned into individual events with the period set to the leader sample
> read counts. Most recently this behavior was disabled by struct
> perf_tool's dont_split_sample_group in the case of perf inject as it
> causes events to be processed multiple times. The perf script behavior
> doesn't rely anywhere on the grouping of the leader sample events and
> even with it the metric format option doesn't work either - I'll save
> pasting a screen full of blank lines here.

Right, it seems to be broken at some point.

> 
> > > but anyway I decided to fix it to the best of my ability in this
> > > series. So the script side counters were removed and the regular ones
> > > associated with the evsel used. The json metrics were all searched
> > > looking for ones that have a subset of events matching those in the
> > > perf script session, and all metrics are printed. This is kind of
> > > weird as the counters are being set by the period of samples, but I
> > > carried the behavior forward. I suspect there needs to be follow up
> > > work to make this better, but what is in the series is superior to
> > > what is currently in the tree. Follow up work could include finding
> > > metrics for the machine in the perf.data rather than using the host,
> > > allowing multiple metrics even if the metric ids of the events differ,
> > > fixing pre-existing `perf stat record/report` issues, etc.
> > >
> > > There is a lot of stat tests that, for example, assume '-e
> > > instructions,cycles' will produce an IPC metric. These things needed
> > > tidying as now the metric must be explicitly asked for and when doing
> > > this ones using software events were preferred to increase
> > > compatibility. As the test updates were numerous they are distinct to
> > > the patches updating the functionality causing periods in the series
> > > where not all tests are passing. If this is undesirable the test fixes
> > > can be squashed into the functionality updates.
> >
> > Hmm.. how many of them?  I think it'd better to have the test changes at
> > the same time so that we can assure test success count after the change.
> > Can the test changes be squashed into one or two commits?
> 
> So the patches are below. The first set are all clean up:
> 
> > > Ian Rogers (22):
> > >   perf evsel: Remove unused metric_events variable
> > >   perf metricgroup: Update comment on location of metric_event list
> > >   perf metricgroup: Missed free on error path
> > >   perf metricgroup: When copy metrics copy default information
> > >   perf metricgroup: Add care to picking the evsel for displaying a
> > >     metric
> > >   perf jevents: Make all tables static

I've applied most of this part to perf-tools-next, will take a look at
others later.

Thanks,
Namhyung

> 
> Then there is the addition of the legacy metrics as json:
> 
> > >   perf expr: Add #target_cpu literal
> > >   perf jevents: Add set of common metrics based on default ones
> > >   perf jevents: Add metric DefaultShowEvents
> > >   perf stat: Add detail -d,-dd,-ddd metrics
> 
> Then there is the change to make perf script metric format work:
> 
> > >   perf script: Change metric format to use json metrics
> 
> Then there is a clean up patch:
> 
> > >   perf stat: Remove hard coded shadow metrics
> 
> Then there are fixes to perf stat's already broken output:
> 
> > >   perf stat: Fix default metricgroup display on hybrid
> > >   perf stat: Sort default events/metrics
> > >   perf stat: Remove "unit" workarounds for metric-only
> 
> Then there are 7 patches updating test expectations. Each patch deals
> with a separate test to make the resolution clear.
> 
> > >   perf test stat+json: Improve metric-only testing
> > >   perf test stat: Ignore failures in Default[234] metricgroups
> > >   perf test stat: Update std_output testing metric expectations
> > >   perf test metrics: Update all metrics for possibly failing default
> > >     metrics
> > >   perf test stat: Update shadow test to use metrics
> > >   perf test stat: Update test expectations and events
> > >   perf test stat csv: Update test expectations and events
> 
> The patch "perf jevents: Add set of common metrics based on default
> ones" most impacts the output but we don't want to verify the default
> stat output with the hardcoded metrics that are removed in "perf stat:
> Remove hard coded shadow metrics". Having a test for both hard coded
> and json metrics in an intermediate state makes little sense and the
> default output is impacting by the 3 patches fixing it and removing
> workarounds.
> 
> It is possible to squash things together but I think something is lost
> in doing so, hence presenting it this way.
> 
> Thanks,
> Ian