Re: perf: PERF_EVENT_IOC_PERIOD on ARM vs everywhere else

[Stephane Eranian]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 11:36:52AM -0400, Vince Weaver wrote:
>> On Tue, 29 Oct 2013, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> > On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 04:28:10AM +0000, Will Deacon wrote:
>> > >
>> > > I can CC LKML on ARM perf patches if you think it will help, but all PMU
>> > > backend patches go via their respective arch trees afaict.
>> >
>> > Just those that change user visible semantics that are shared between
>> > archs I suppose :-)
>>
>> I suppose it is hard to know what's commonly shared.  I hadn't realized
>> that the IOC_PERIOD stuff was arch specific code, I would have thought
>> it was common code.
>
> OK, so I've gone over this and this isn't in fact arch specific at all.
> The arch code should simply use ->period to reset the counters, and
> stuff the last period into ->last_period.
>
> Aside from that it shouldn't do anything. So what ARM did was actively
> wrong.
>
> Esp. since it added code to the common path instead of the uncommon
> (ioctl) path.
>
>> > We could start by making all archs do the same thing again; but yes
>> > ideally we'd move some of it into generic code. Not entirely sure how
>> > that will work out though, there's a reason its in per-arch code :/
>> >
>> >
>> > Vince, what would you prefer to do here?
>>
>> as with most of thes things there isn't really a good answer.
>
> Yeah, I was afraid of that :/
>
>> It turns out in the end that PAPI isn't bit by this one, because instead
>> of using PERF_EVENT_IOC_PERIOD when the period is changed, PAPI just tears
>> down all the perf_events and re-sets them up from scratch with the new
>> period.  This is probably because PERF_EVENT_IOC_PERIOD was broken until
>> 2.6.36.
>
> Right, it was one of those interfaces that people claimed were
> absolutely required so I implemented them but then nobody actually tried
> using them for a long while :-(
>
Yes, I now remember about this problem. As Vince said, this is an old
issue which never got solved. I remember getting questions about it.

I would expect this ioctl to be used by PAPI because they are doing
user level sampling, i.e.,  get a user notification for each event.

> This is a prime example of why Ingo now insists the perf tools supports
> every new interface, we had too many of these incidents.
>
>> It is true the current behavior is unexpected.  What was the logic behind
>> deferring to the next overflow for the update?  Was it a code simplicity
>> thing?  Or were there hardware reasons behind it?
>
> Mostly an oversight I think. The delay is simply how it worked out in
> that the arch code has to reload the period once an event fires in order
> to reprogram. Since nobody actually used the thing, nobody had
> experience with it.
>
> Now it turns out someone had a complaint but hid it somewhere on some
> obscure list :-(
>
> There is actually generic code that force resets the period; see
> perf_event_period().
>
>> Definitely when an event is stopped, it makes more sense for
>> PERF_EVENT_IOC_PERIOD to take place immediately.
>>
>> I'm not sure what happens if we try to use it on a running event,
>> especially if we've already passed the new period value.
>
> The below code should deal with both cases I think -- completely
> untested.
>
I can test this easily with libpfm4.

> ---
>  arch/arm/kernel/perf_event.c |  4 ----
>  kernel/events/core.c         | 16 +++++++++++++++-
>  2 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/arm/kernel/perf_event.c b/arch/arm/kernel/perf_event.c
> index e186ee1e63f6..4eb288f7ba69 100644
> --- a/arch/arm/kernel/perf_event.c
> +++ b/arch/arm/kernel/perf_event.c
> @@ -99,10 +99,6 @@ int armpmu_event_set_period(struct perf_event *event)
>         s64 period = hwc->sample_period;
>         int ret = 0;
>
> -       /* The period may have been changed by PERF_EVENT_IOC_PERIOD */
> -       if (unlikely(period != hwc->last_period))
> -               left = period - (hwc->last_period - left);
> -
>         if (unlikely(left <= -period)) {
>                 left = period;
>                 local64_set(&hwc->period_left, left);
> diff --git a/kernel/events/core.c b/kernel/events/core.c
> index 17b3c6cf1606..c45d53e561da 100644
> --- a/kernel/events/core.c
> +++ b/kernel/events/core.c
> @@ -3530,7 +3530,7 @@ static void perf_event_for_each(struct perf_event *event,
>  static int perf_event_period(struct perf_event *event, u64 __user *arg)
>  {
>         struct perf_event_context *ctx = event->ctx;
> -       int ret = 0;
> +       int ret = 0, active;
>         u64 value;
>
>         if (!is_sampling_event(event))
> @@ -3554,6 +3554,20 @@ static int perf_event_period(struct perf_event *event, u64 __user *arg)
>                 event->attr.sample_period = value;
>                 event->hw.sample_period = value;
>         }
> +
> +       active = (event->state == PERF_EVENT_STATE_ACTIVE);
> +       if (active) {
> +               perf_pmu_disable(ctx->pmu);
> +               event->pmu->stop(event, PERF_EF_UPDATE);
> +       }
> +
> +       local64_set(event->hw.period_left, 0);
> +
> +       if (active) {
> +               event->pmu->start(event, PERF_EF_RELOAD);
> +               perf_pmu_enable(ctx->pmu);
> +       }
> +
>  unlock:
>         raw_spin_unlock_irq(&ctx->lock);
>
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