Re: [PATCH v0 04/71] itrace: Infrastructure for instruction flowtracing units

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 01:14:09PM +0200, Alexander Shishkin wrote:
> Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 09:53:44AM +0200, Alexander Shishkin wrote:
> >> Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> >> > The thing is; why can't you zero-copy whatever buffer the hardware
> >> > writes into, into the normal buffer?
> >> 
> >> I'm not sure I understand. You mean, have the buffer split between perf
> >> data and trace data?
> >
> > Yep, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work.
> >
> > When the hardware thing sends an interrupt to notify us its buffer is
> > 'full', stop the recorder, try to create a single record in the buffer
> > that's big enough + 1 page, then swizzle the hardware pages and the
> > buffer pages for that record, using the +1 page to page align the actual
> > data. Then (re)start the hardware on the 'new' pages.
> 
> We configure the hardware thing to send an interrupt *before* the buffer
> is full, keep the recorder running while userspace saves stuff to
> perf.data file. Recording only stops if perf fails to read the trace
> data out fast enough and the buffer fills up. So you'd have a complete
> trace.
> 
> Also, we have what we call a "snapshot" mode, where we keep the hardware
> thing running, writing data to a circular buffer till it's stopped, in
> case we're only interested in the most recent trace data to see what it
> is that takes too long to respond, etc. And while it is running, we're
> getting new records in the perf stream all the time (mmaps, etc).
> 
> Put simple: perf data and trace data are two different separate types of
> information that originate from two different sources, can exist and
> make sense separately from one another and should not be mixed.

Well you're either having to change your stance or we're done talking
right now.
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