Re: [PATCH 1/3] perf/x86: add sysfs entry to freeze counter on SMI

[Andi Kleen]

On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 09:31:38PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 11:25:49AM -0700, kan.liang@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > From: Kan Liang <Kan.liang@xxxxxxxxx>
> > 
> > When setting FREEZE_WHILE_SMM bit in IA32_DEBUGCTL, all performance
> > counters will be effected. There is no way to do per-counter freeze
> > on smi. So it should not use the per-event interface (e.g. ioctl or
> > event attribute) to set FREEZE_WHILE_SMM bit.
> > 
> > Adds sysfs entry /sys/device/cpu/freeze_on_smi to set FREEZE_WHILE_SMM
> > bit in IA32_DEBUGCTL. When set, freezes perfmon and trace messages
> > while in SMM.
> > Value has to be 0 or 1. It will be applied to all possible cpus.
> 
> So is there ever a good reason to not set this?

That means SMIs become invisible to most performance counters.

I don't think that's a good default. If the SMI takes 1% of my 
cycles I want to see it.

The masking trick is mainly useful when doing --smi-cost

-Andi