Re: [PATCH v3 00/10] x86: ORC unwinder (previously undwarf)

[Mike Galbraith]

On Wed, 2017-07-12 at 21:15 -0700, Andi Kleen wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 05:03:00AM +0200, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > On Wed, 2017-07-12 at 15:30 -0700, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > > >
> > > > The ORC data format does have a few downsides compared to DWARF.  The
> > > > ORC unwind tables take up ~1MB more memory than DWARF eh_frame tables.
> > > >
> > > Can we have an option to just use dwarf instead? For people
> > > who don't want to waste a MB+ to solve a problem that doesn't
> > > exist (as proven by many years of opensuse kernel experience)
> > 
> > Sure the dwarf unwinder works well for crashes, but at the price of
> > demolishing ftrace/perf utility.
> 
> You mean the unwind performance?

Yeah, it hurts.. massively, has even been known to kill big boxen.

> That's a valid concern, but neither ORC nor dwarf are likely
> to address it. However most usages of ftrace/perf shouldn't be that
> depending on unwind performance -- just lower the frequency of your
> events. 
> 
> The only possible win is if the win from not using FP code is
> significant enough. On the x86 side the only modern CPUs that should really
> care about this are Atoms.

Nope, they all care.  Measure performance delta of fast/light stuff.

Maybe I'm expecting too much good stuff to follow, but don't spoil it
for me, I think I'm looking at a real winner :)

	-Mike