Re: [RFC] [PATCH 1/1] perf: add support for arch-dependent symbolic event names to "perf stat"

[Corey Ashford <cjashfor@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On 3/11/2010 12:46 PM, Corey Ashford wrote:
>
>
> On 3/11/2010 11:14 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>>
>> * Corey Ashford<cjashfor@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>>> I'm not sure how that would work. The issue I am trying to solve
>>> here is that Power arch chips have a large number of very
>>> hardware-specific events that are not generalizable. Many of these
>>> events not only have names, but other user-configurable bits as well
>>> that select or narrow the scope of which exact events are recorded.
>>> This issue is dealt with nicely in libpfm4, as it has mechanisms for
>>> parsing event names and attributes (aka modifiers or unit masks),
>>> and then produces a usable config field for the perf_events_attr
>>> struct.
>>>
>>> Should I take it from the above that you are completely against the
>>> idea of using an external library for hardware-specific event and
>>> attribute naming?
>>
>> Could you give a few relevant examples of events in question, and the
>> kind of
>> configurability/attributes they have on Power?
>
> Here are a few examples for the Power A2 processor. I've distorted the
> names because PMU architecture isn't publicly released yet.
>
> PM_DE_PMC_9:hrd_mask=0xff:hrd=0x22:pma_mask=0x3fff:pma=0x1b2d:culling_mode=3
>
> PM_EX_0x03:lane=2:vlane=1
> PM_OWE_ENG_MAC_FULL:usu=3

Just a follow-up note to this...

I learned that the much of the high-level architecture of the new chip that IBM 
is working on has been publicly released recently, so I have "undistorted" the 
event names below:

PM_DC_PMC_9:lpid_mask=0xff:lpid=0x22:pid_mask=0x3fff:pid=0x1b2d:marking_mode=3
PM_REGX_0x03:lane=2:vlane=1
PM_XML_ENG_MAC_FULL:sus=3


DC = Decompression/Compression accelerator
PMC_9 = Peformance monitoring event 9
REGX = Regular eXpression accelerator
XML = XML parsing accelerator
pid = process id to match
pid_mask = process id match mask
lpid = logical partition id
lpid_mask = logical partition id mask
sus = source unit select
lane, vlane = signal routing fields
marking_mode = used to determine which accelerator work units to mark for 
performance monitoring

- Corey