Re: [RESEND PATCH V3 3/8] perf/x86/intel: Support hardware TopDown metrics

Peter Zijlstra
2019-08-31T09:18:11Z

On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 12:56:02PM -0400, Liang, Kan wrote:
> On 8/29/2019 9:52 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:

> > What what? The PERF_METRICS contents depends on the FIXCTR3 value ?!
>
> Yes.
>
> For current implementation, PERF_METRIC MSR is composed by four fields,
> backend bound, frontend bound, bad speculation and retiring.
> Each of the fields are populated using the below formula for eg:
> PERF_METRIC[RETIRING] = (0xFF *
> PERF_METRICS_RETIRING_INTERNAL_48bit_COUNTER)
> / FIXCTR3

So it really depends on the actual exposed FIXCTR3 _value_ to compute
the PERF_METRIC field? *mind boggles*, that's really unspeakable crap.
And this isn't documented anywhere afaict.

I was thinking they've have an internal counter for the SLOTS value too,
so the PERF_METRIC fields are indenpendent; which would be like 'sane'.

Exposing the internal counters would've been _soooo_ much better, just
add 4 more fixed counters and call it a day.

> The METRICS_OVF indicates the overflow of any internal counters.

OK, but I'm thinking that by that time the fraction in PERF_METRIC will
be too coarse and we're loosing precision. Reconstruction will be
inaccurate.

> The internal counters only start counting from 0, which cannot be programmed
> by SW. But resetting the PERF_METRIC would implicitly resetting the internal
> counters.

The only possible option given the choices.