Re: [PATCH V6 01/16] perf/core: Add PERF_SAMPLE_DATA_PAGE_SIZE

Peter Zijlstra
2020-08-10T21:35:37Z

On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 02:24:21PM -0700, Kan Liang wrote:
> Current perf can report both virtual addresses and physical addresses,
> but not the page size. Without the page size information of the utilized
> page, users cannot decide whether to promote/demote large pages to
> optimize memory usage.
>
> Add a new sample type for the data page size.
>
> Current perf already has a facility to collect data virtual addresses.
> A page walker is required to walk the pages tables and calculate the
> page size from a given virtual address.
>
> On some platforms, e.g., X86, the page walker is invoked in an NMI
> handler. So the page walker must be IRQ-safe and low overhead. Besides,
> the page walker should work for both user and kernel virtual address.
> The existing generic page walker, e.g., walk_page_range_novma(), is a
> little bit complex and doesn't guarantee the IRQ-safe. The follow_page()
> is only for user-virtual address.

s/IRQ/NMI/g