RE: [PATCH 0/7] selftests/resctrl: Add resctrl selftest

[Prakhya, Sai Praneeth]

> > No, the selftest in this patch set will not replace intel-cmt-cat or
> > vice versa.
> >
> > The selftest in this patch set has a different purpose from intel-cmt-cat:
> > the selftest is a test tool which validates resctrl functionalities
> > while intel-cmt-cat is mainly a utility that provides base library for
> > higher level applications including performance analysis tools,
> > benchmark measurement tools, and potential resctrl tests. For example,
> > running MBA test in the selftests tells MBA working or not working
> > (fail/pass) right way. The
> 
> Ok. Sure. Let me take a look at selftest closely. Will send my feedback soon.

Great!

> 
> > intel-cmt-cat doesn't have this testing capability unless we extend
> > the tool.
> >
> > And intel-cmt-cat is maintained and developed by Intel. I don't think
> > it's easy to extend it to AMD and ARM features. The selftest will be
> > maintained
> 
> We1l.. We were hoping to have a common tool across. It makes it easy for
> distros. Probably, we can have a separate discussion on this.
>

The main goal of this test suite is to validate values reported by resctrl features 
i.e. we need _some_way_ to check if values reported by resctrl features are 
correct or not.

For (Intel) Memory Bandwidth features like MBA and MBM, perf iMC 
(Integrated Memory Controller) is used for validation. As a part of test, we run a 
benchmark (eg: fill_buf) and get memory bandwidth values from MBM and iMC 
and verify if the difference between both the reported values are in a reasonable range.

To make this common across x86, could you please let us know if similar things 
(i.e. perf iMC) exist on AMD? If so, you could add it in. The same applies for ARM.

Regards,
Sai