Re: [PATCH v4 3/4] perf/core: Remove pmu linear searching code

[Oliver Upton]

On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 04:20:31PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 07:11:41AM +0000, Oliver Upton wrote:
> 
> > The PMUv3 driver does pass a name, but it relies on getting back an
> > allocated pmu id as @type is -1 in the call to perf_pmu_register().
> > 
> > What actually broke is how KVM probes for a default core PMU to use for
> > a guest. kvm_pmu_probe_armpmu() creates a counter w/ PERF_TYPE_RAW and
> > reads the pmu from the returned perf_event. The linear search had the
> > effect of eventually stumbling on the correct core PMU and succeeding.
> > 
> > Perf folks: is this WAI for heterogenous systems?
> 
> TBH, I'm not sure. hetero and virt don't mix very well AFAIK and I'm not
> sure what ARM64 does here.
> 
> IIRC the only way is to hard affine things; that is, force vCPU of
> 'type' to the pCPU mask of 'type' CPUs.

We provide absolutely no illusion of consistency across implementations.
Userspace can select the PMU type, and then it is a userspace problem
affining vCPUs to the right pCPUs.

And if they get that wrong, we just bail and refuse to run the vCPU.

> If you don't do that; or let userspace 'override' that, things go
> sideways *real* fast.

Oh yeah, and I wish PMUs were the only problem with these hetero
systems...

> Mark gonna have to look at this.

Cool. I'll go ahead with the KVM cleanup regardless of the outcome.

--
Thanks,
Oliver