Re: [PATCH v2] watchdog: Prefer use "ref-cycles" for NMI watchdog

From: Song Liu
Date: Wed May 17 2023 - 13:51:16 EST




> On May 17, 2023, at 12:31 AM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 04:58:17PM -0700, Song Liu wrote:
>> NMI watchdog permanently consumes one hardware counters per CPU on the
>> system. For systems that use many hardware counters, this causes more
>> aggressive time multiplexing of perf events.
>>
>> OTOH, some CPUs (mostly Intel) support "ref-cycles" event, which is rarely
>> used. Try use "ref-cycles" for the watchdog, so that one more hardware
>> counter is available to the user. If the CPU doesn't support "ref-cycles",
>> fall back to "cycles".
>>
>> The downside of this change is that users of "ref-cycles" need to disable
>> nmi_watchdog.
>
> I still utterly hate how you hardcode ref-cycles

OK.. let me try with kernel cmdline args. Sending v3.

Thanks,
Song