[PATCH v5 00/14] Linux RISC-V trace framework and drivers
From: Mayuresh Chitale
Date: Mon Aug 10 2026 - 11:39:51 EST
As decided during the discussion on v4 of this series the 'rvtrace' framework is
now being converted into 'gtrace' which is an architecture-neutral core with
RISC-V E-trace as its first backend. The 'gtrace' core framework has the minimal
shared plumbing (component registration, path create/destroy, path start/stop, etc)
and the RISC-V trace drivers are its first consumer. It should be possible for the
required ARM components to be adapted to the same framework in a future.
This series also adds initial support for RISC-V trace compnent drivers.
The RISC-V trace v1.0 specification is already ratified and can be found at:
https://github.com/riscv-non-isa/e-trace-encap/releases/tag/v1.0.0-ratified
https://github.com/riscv-non-isa/tg-nexus-trace/releases/tag/1.0_Ratified
The RISC-V trace component drivers are designed to be agnostic to the
underlying trace protocol hence both RISC-V E-trace and RISC-V N-trace should
work fine. The discovery of trace protocl parameters are left to user-space
trace decoder.
In the future, there will be subsequent series adding:
1) Sysfs support
2) ACPI support
3) More trace drivers (such as funnel, ATB, etc)
4) Support for upcoming self-hosted trace specification
5) Arm component support under the gtrace framework
6) ... and more ...
These patches can also be found in the riscv_trace_support_v5 branch at:
https://github.com/mdchitale/linux.git
To test the patches, we need QEMU virt machine with RISC-V trace support
which can be found in rv-etrace branch at:
https://gitlab.com/danielhb/qemu.git
To capture gtrace data using perf on QEMU virt machine do the following:
1) Launch QEMU virt machine
$ qemu-system-riscv64 -nographic -M virt -smp 2 -bios fw_dynamic.bin \
-kernel Image -append "root=/dev/vda rw console=ttyS0 earlycon=sbi" \
-drive file=/path/to/rootfs.img,id=disk1,if=none,format=raw \
-device virtio-blk-device,drive=disk1
2) Run perf record to capture gtrace data
$ perf record --all-cpus -e gtrace/event=0x1/ <command>
3) The step2 would create a perf.data file which has the gtrace data.
Now run perf report -D and look for PERF_RECORD_AUXTRACE event
section(s) which point(s) to the actual gtrace data offset.
Changes since v4:
- Introduced a new architecture-neutral 'gtrace' (Generic Trace) framework
and moved the RISC-V trace drivers on top of it instead of a RISC-V-only
'rvtrace' core.
- Added new PATCH3 "gtrace: Add RISC-V platform driver for the gtrace
framework" to split out the RISC-V platform/DT code from the core
framework patch.
- Moved all rvtrace driver sources from drivers/hwtracing/rvtrace/ to
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/, with single Kconfig, Makefile using
- Made the perf driver (previously rvtrace-perf.c) architecture-neutral
and moved it into the gtrace framework as gtrace-perf.c; PMU name
changed from "rvtrace" to "gtrace"
- Added new PATCH8 "perf: Add gtrace AUX buffer trace format type" to
define PERF_AUX_FLAG_GTRACE_FORMAT_ETRACE which is used in later patches.
- copyto_auxbuf() and gtrace_path_copyto_auxbuf() now take an output
parameter so the AUX data format can be reported by the sink
driver by setting PERF_AUX_FLAG_GTRACE_FORMAT_ETRACE.
- Renamed the generic side of the perf tools support from rvtrace* to
gtrace*. perf.data ABI is unchanged.
- Fixed gtrace ramsink start/stop to call gtrace_enable_component()/
gtrace_disable_component() to remove duplication with code in
gtrace-core.c
- Updated the MAINTAINERS patch to refer to gtrace framework instead of
rvtrace
Changes since v3:
- Rebased on Linux-7.1-rc1
- Use kzalloc_obj() in-place of kzalloc() in PATCH2, PATCH3 and PATCH9
- Improved PATCH7 to save the previous WP value
Changes since v2:
- Rebased on Linux-7.0-rc1
- Addressed Rob's comments on DT bindings in PATCH1
- Addressed ref-count related issues in rvtrace_of_parse_outconns()
of PATCH2
- Made RVtrace framework more generic by avoiding implicit access
to component registers in PATCH2
- More improvements in trRamStart/Limit/WP programming and other
improvments in PATCH7
- Removed RVTRACE_BUF_LEN from PATCH9
- Removed redundant page_size from PATCH10
- Renamed found_etm in PATCH10
- Removed rvtrace_recording_init() declaration from header in PATCH11
Changes since v1:
- Rebased on Linux-6.18-rc3
- Addressed Rob's comments in dt-bindings added by PATCH1
- Get reference of conn->dest_fwnode and add missing break in
rvtrace_of_parse_outconns() of rvtrace-platform drivers added
by PATCH2
- Added new inline function rvtrace_comp_is_empty() in PATCH2
and used it in rvtrace_encoder_stop() added by PATCH5
- Fixed trRamWPLow usage in PATCH7
- Determine RAM sink buffer size based on component implementation
ID and reduce default RAM sink buffer size to 1MB
- Add new PATCH8 to enable DMA_RESTRICTED_POOL in RISC-V defconfig
so that implementations with RAM sink address restrictions can
be handled.
Anup Patel (7):
dt-bindings: Add RISC-V trace component bindings
hwtracing: gtrace: Initial implementation of gtrace framework
gtrace: Add RISC-V platform driver for the gtrace framework
gtrace: Add functions to create/destroy a trace component path
gtrace: Add function to copy into perf AUX buffer
riscv: Enable DMA_RESTRICTED_POOL in defconfig
MAINTAINERS: Add entry for RISC-V trace framework
Mayuresh Chitale (7):
gtrace: Add functions to start/stop tracing on a component path
gtrace: Add RISC-V Trace encoder driver
perf: Add gtrace AUX buffer trace format type
gtrace: Add RISC-V Trace ramsink driver
gtrace: Add perf driver for tracing using perf tool
perf tools: Add RISC-V trace PMU record capabilities
perf tools: Initial support for gtrace decoder
.../bindings/riscv/riscv,trace-component.yaml | 120 +++
MAINTAINERS | 11 +
arch/riscv/configs/defconfig | 1 +
drivers/Makefile | 1 +
drivers/hwtracing/Kconfig | 2 +
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/Kconfig | 59 ++
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/Makefile | 8 +
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/gtrace-core.c | 744 ++++++++++++++++++
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/gtrace-perf.c | 347 ++++++++
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/rvtrace-encoder.c | 99 +++
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/rvtrace-platform.c | 286 +++++++
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/rvtrace-ramsink.c | 320 ++++++++
drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/rvtrace.h | 121 +++
include/linux/gtrace.h | 323 ++++++++
include/uapi/linux/perf_event.h | 4 +
tools/perf/arch/riscv/util/Build | 1 +
tools/perf/arch/riscv/util/auxtrace.c | 217 +++++
tools/perf/util/Build | 1 +
tools/perf/util/auxtrace.c | 4 +
tools/perf/util/auxtrace.h | 1 +
tools/perf/util/gtrace-decoder.c | 93 +++
tools/perf/util/gtrace.h | 13 +
22 files changed, 2776 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/riscv/riscv,trace-component.yaml
create mode 100644 drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/Kconfig
create mode 100644 drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/Makefile
create mode 100644 drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/gtrace-core.c
create mode 100644 drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/gtrace-perf.c
create mode 100644 drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/rvtrace-encoder.c
create mode 100644 drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/rvtrace-platform.c
create mode 100644 drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/rvtrace-ramsink.c
create mode 100644 drivers/hwtracing/gtrace/rvtrace.h
create mode 100644 include/linux/gtrace.h
create mode 100644 tools/perf/arch/riscv/util/auxtrace.c
create mode 100644 tools/perf/util/gtrace-decoder.c
create mode 100644 tools/perf/util/gtrace.h
--
2.43.0