Re: [PATCH v3 01/11] perf, tools: Support weak groups

[Jiri Olsa]

On Fri, Sep 01, 2017 at 06:57:59PM +0200, Jiri Olsa wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 12:40:26PM -0700, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > From: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > 
> > Setting up groups can be complicated due to the
> > complicated scheduling restrictions of different PMUs.
> > User tools usually don't understand all these restrictions.
> > Still in many cases it is useful to set up groups and
> > they work most of the time. However if the group
> > is set up wrong some members will not reported any values
> > because they never get scheduled.
> > 
> > Add a concept of a 'weak group': try to set up a group,
> > but if it's not schedulable fallback to not using
> > a group. That gives us the best of both worlds:
> > groups if they work, but still a usable fallback if they don't.
> > 
> > In theory it would be possible to have more complex fallback
> > strategies (e.g. try to split the group in half), but
> > the simple fallback of not using a group seems to work for now.
> > 
> > So far the weak group is only implemented for perf stat,
> > not for record.
> > 
> > Here's an unschedulable group (on IvyBridge with SMT on)
> > 
> > % perf stat -e '{branches,branch-misses,l1d.replacement,l2_lines_in.all,l2_rqsts.all_code_rd}' -a sleep 1
> > 
> >         73,806,067      branches
> >          4,848,144      branch-misses             #    6.57% of all branches
> >         14,754,458      l1d.replacement
> >         24,905,558      l2_lines_in.all
> >    <not supported>      l2_rqsts.all_code_rd         <------- will never report anything
> > 
> > With the weak group:
> > 
> > % perf stat -e '{branches,branch-misses,l1d.replacement,l2_lines_in.all,l2_rqsts.all_code_rd}:W' -a sleep 1
> > 
> >        125,366,055      branches                                                      (80.02%)
> >          9,208,402      branch-misses             #    7.35% of all branches          (80.01%)
> >         24,560,249      l1d.replacement                                               (80.00%)
> >         43,174,971      l2_lines_in.all                                               (80.05%)
> >         31,891,457      l2_rqsts.all_code_rd                                          (79.92%)
> > 
> > The extra event scheduled with some extra multiplexing
> > 
> > v2: Move fallback code to separate function.
> > Add comment on for_each_group_member
> > Adjust to new perf_evsel__close interface
> > v3:
> > Fix debug print out.
> > Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> Acked-by: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@xxxxxxxxxx>

just realized we support this in stat only and the doc
indicates it's global.. maybe the perf-list.txt line
could have the '(perf stat only)' suffix ;-)

jirka