Re: perf tools miscellaneous questions

From: Francis Moreau
Date: Thu Nov 04 2010 - 04:46:09 EST


Francis Moreau <francis.moro@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Reid Kleckner <reid.kleckner@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> What's exactly the 'cache-misses' event ? does it include both instructions
>>>> _and_ data cache misses ? both L1 and L2 caches ?
>>>>
>>
>>>> I was expecting so but the following command makes me wondering:
>>>>
>>>>   $ perf stat -e cache-misses:u,l1d-loads-misses:u true
>>>>     Performance counter stats for 'true':
>>>>
>>>>                 763  cache-misses
>>>>                 874  L1-dcache-load-misses
>>>>
>>>>         0.000916609  seconds time elapsed
>>>>
>>>> Here cache-misses < L1-dcache-load-misses.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dunno, will let others answer.
>>
>> I think it corresponds to last level cache misses, which makes sense
>> here. The difference in the two numbers represents hits to L2 (and L3
>> if it exists).
>
> How could I know the number of cache level on my cpu ?
>
> I tried:
>
> $ perf stat -e cache-misses:u,l1d-loads-misses:u true
>
> Performance counter stats for 'true':
>
> 802 cache-misses
> 937 L1-dcache-load-misses
>
> 0.000996578 seconds time elapsed
>
> $ perf stat -e cache-misses:u,L2-loads-misses:u true
>
> Performance counter stats for 'true':
>
> 788 cache-misses
> 95 LLC-load-misses
>
> 0.001025423 seconds time elapsed
>
> So it looks like you're right: in my case I have this cache
> configuration:
>

oops sorry, I replied too early...

so my cache configuration is:

L1 -> L2 -> LLC

where L2 misses is given by: 'cache-misses' - 'LLC-load-misses'

Is that correct ?

If so, I found 'cache-misses' term very not intuitive IMHO, probably
because I'm not an expert in cpu caches...

--
Francis
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