Re: [RFC][Patch 1/1] Oprofile Multiplexing

From: Jason Yeh
Date: Thu May 29 2008 - 15:04:27 EST



Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:

I have been contemplating the idea of using the performance counters in
the LTTng kernel tracer for quite a while, but I see the the underlying
implementations often deal with those counters as if they were
per-process ressources. Given those ressources are limited amongst the
whole system, would it make sense to allow an in-kernel consumer to
connect to some of these counters on a per-CPU basis and return a
"ressource not available error" to userspace when it tries to connect to
them ? (and also to kick out a userspace reader when an higher priority
in-kernel request is done, which implies that the "read" operation may
fail)


Mathieu,

It sounds like you are asking a re-design of the current Oprofile. I agree
with you that some sort of abstraction are needed for arbitrate who get to
connect the counters. This is probably part of the objectives of the Perfmon2
guys working toward.

The patch is aimed to provide a quick way based on the current
implementation to be able to profile more events than the number of hardware
counters.

Jason

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