[PATCH v3 10/10] Documentation: arm64: Document PMU counters access from userspace

Rob Herring
2020-09-11T21:52:39Z

From: Raphael Gault <raphael.gault@arm.com>

Add a documentation file to describe the access to the pmu hardware
counters from userspace

Signed-off-by: Raphael Gault <raphael.gault@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Rob Herring <robh@kernel.org>
---
v2:
- Update links to test examples

Changes from Raphael's v4:
- Convert to rSt
- Update chained event status
- Add section for heterogeneous systems
---
Documentation/arm64/index.rst | 1 +
.../arm64/perf_counter_user_access.rst | 56 +++++++++++++++++++
2 files changed, 57 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 Documentation/arm64/perf_counter_user_access.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/arm64/index.rst b/Documentation/arm64/index.rst
index d9665d83c53a..c712a08e7627 100644
--- a/Documentation/arm64/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/arm64/index.rst
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ ARM64 Architecture
legacy_instructions
memory
perf
+ perf_counter_user_access
pointer-authentication
silicon-errata
sve
diff --git a/Documentation/arm64/perf_counter_user_access.rst b/Documentation/arm64/perf_counter_user_access.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..e49e141f10cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/arm64/perf_counter_user_access.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+=============================================
+Access to PMU hardware counter from userspace
+=============================================
+
+Overview
+--------
+The perf userspace tool relies on the PMU to monitor events. It offers an
+abstraction layer over the hardware counters since the underlying
+implementation is cpu-dependent.
+Arm64 allows userspace tools to have access to the registers storing the
+hardware counters' values directly.
+
+This targets specifically self-monitoring tasks in order to reduce the overhead
+by directly accessing the registers without having to go through the kernel.
+
+How-to
+------
+The focus is set on the armv8 pmuv3 which makes sure that the access to the pmu
+registers is enabled and that the userspace has access to the relevant
+information in order to use them.
+
+In order to have access to the hardware counter it is necessary to open the event
+using the perf tool interface: the sys_perf_event_open syscall returns a fd which
+can subsequently be used with the mmap syscall in order to retrieve a page of
+memory containing information about the event.
+The PMU driver uses this page to expose to the user the hardware counter's
+index and other necessary data. Using this index enables the user to access the
+PMU registers using the `mrs` instruction.
+
+The userspace access is supported in libperf using the perf_evsel__mmap()
+and perf_evsel__read() functions. See `tools/lib/perf/tests/test-evsel.c`_ for
+an example.
+
+About heterogeneous systems
+---------------------------
+On heterogeneous systems such as big.LITTLE, userspace PMU counter access can
+only be enabled when the tasks are pinned to a homogeneous subset of cores and
+the corresponding PMU instance is opened by specifying the 'type' attribute.
+The use of generic event types is not supported in this case.
+
+Have a look at `tools/perf/arch/arm64/tests/user-events.c`_ for an example. It
+can be run using the perf tool to check that the access to the registers works
+correctly from userspace:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+ perf test -v user
+
+About chained events
+--------------------
+Chained events are not supported in userspace. If a 64-bit counter is requested,
+userspace access will only be enabled if the underlying counter is 64-bit.
+
+.. Links
+.. _tools/perf/arch/arm64/tests/user-events.c:
+ https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/tools/perf/arch/arm64/tests/user-events.c
--
2.25.1