Re: [PATCH v4 05/12] arm-cci: PMU: Add support for transactions

[Suzuki K. Poulose]

On 05/01/16 13:37, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 10:55:29AM +0000, Suzuki K. Poulose wrote:
> > Thanks for that hint. Here is what I cam up with. We don't reschedule
> > the events, all we need to do is group the writes to the counters. Hence
> > we could as well add a flag for those events which need programming
> > and perform the write in pmu::pmu_enable().
>
> I'm still somewhat confused..
>
> > Grouping the writes to counters can ammortise the cost of the operation
> > on PMUs where it is expensive (e.g, CCI-500).
>
> This rationale makes me think you want to reduce the number of counter
> writes, not batch them per-se.
>
> So why are you unconditionally writing all counters, instead of only
> those that changed?

The ARM CCI PMU reprograms all the counters with a specific value (2^31)
to account for high interrupt latencies in recording the counters that
overflowed. So, pmu_stop() updates the counter and pmu_start() resets
the counter to the above value, always.

Now, writing to a single counter requires

1) Stopping and disabling all the counters in HW (So that step 3 doesn't
interfere with the other counters)
2) Program the target counter with invalid event and enable the counter.
3) Enable the PMU and then write to the counter.
4) Reset everything back to normal.


So, the approach here is to delay the writes to the counters as much as possible
and batch them. So that we don't have to repeat steps 1 & 4 for every single
counter.

Does it help ?

Thanks
Suzuki


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