Re: [RFC PATCH v3 12/14] perf metricgroup: order event groups by size

[Ian Rogers]

On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 7:40 PM Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > I'm not sure if size is that great an heuristic. The dedup algorithm should
> > > work in any case even if you don't order by size, right?
> >
> > Consider two metrics:
> >  - metric 1 with events {A,B}
> >  - metric 2 with events {A,B,C,D}
> > If the list isn't sorted then as the matching takes the first group
> > with all the events, metric 1 will match {A,B} and metric 2 {A,B,C,D}.
> > If the order is sorted to {A,B,C,D},{A,B} then metric 1 matches within
> > the {A,B,C,D} group as does metric 2. The events in metric 1 aren't
> > used and are removed.
>
> Ok. It's better for the longer metric if they stay together.
>
> >
> > The dedup algorithm is very naive :-)
>
> I guess what matters is that it gives reasonable results on the current
> metrics. I assume it does?
>
> How much deduping is happening if you run all metrics?

Hi Andi,

I included this data in the latest cover-letter:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200520072814.128267-1-irogers@xxxxxxxxxx/

> For toplev on my long term todo list was to compare it against
> a hopefully better schedule generated by or-tools, but I never
> got around to coding that up.
>
> -Andi

Agreed, and this relates to your comments about doing the algorithm as
a separate pass outside of find_evsel_group. For that, I don't
disagree but would like to land what we have and then follow up with
improvements.

Thanks,
Ian