Documentation: arm64: Document the PMU event counting threshold feature

Add documentation for the new Perf event open parameters and
the threshold_max capability file.

Reviewed-by: Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: Suzuki K Poulose <suzuki.poulose@arm.com>
Acked-by: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: James Clark <james.clark@arm.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231211161331.1277825-12-james.clark@arm.com
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
This commit is contained in:
James Clark 2023-12-11 16:13:23 +00:00 committed by Will Deacon
parent 816c267544
commit bd690638e2
1 changed files with 72 additions and 0 deletions

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@ -164,3 +164,75 @@ and should be used to mask the upper bits as needed.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/tools/perf/arch/arm64/tests/user-events.c
.. _tools/lib/perf/tests/test-evsel.c:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/tools/lib/perf/tests/test-evsel.c
Event Counting Threshold
==========================================
Overview
--------
FEAT_PMUv3_TH (Armv8.8) permits a PMU counter to increment only on
events whose count meets a specified threshold condition. For example if
threshold_compare is set to 2 ('Greater than or equal'), and the
threshold is set to 2, then the PMU counter will now only increment by
when an event would have previously incremented the PMU counter by 2 or
more on a single processor cycle.
To increment by 1 after passing the threshold condition instead of the
number of events on that cycle, add the 'threshold_count' option to the
commandline.
How-to
------
These are the parameters for controlling the feature:
.. list-table::
:header-rows: 1
* - Parameter
- Description
* - threshold
- Value to threshold the event by. A value of 0 means that
thresholding is disabled and the other parameters have no effect.
* - threshold_compare
- | Comparison function to use, with the following values supported:
|
| 0: Not-equal
| 1: Equals
| 2: Greater-than-or-equal
| 3: Less-than
* - threshold_count
- If this is set, count by 1 after passing the threshold condition
instead of the value of the event on this cycle.
The threshold, threshold_compare and threshold_count values can be
provided per event, for example:
.. code-block:: sh
perf stat -e stall_slot/threshold=2,threshold_compare=2/ \
-e dtlb_walk/threshold=10,threshold_compare=3,threshold_count/
In this example the stall_slot event will count by 2 or more on every
cycle where 2 or more stalls happen. And dtlb_walk will count by 1 on
every cycle where the number of dtlb walks were less than 10.
The maximum supported threshold value can be read from the caps of each
PMU, for example:
.. code-block:: sh
cat /sys/bus/event_source/devices/armv8_pmuv3/caps/threshold_max
0x000000ff
If a value higher than this is given, then opening the event will result
in an error. The highest possible maximum is 4095, as the config field
for threshold is limited to 12 bits, and the Perf tool will refuse to
parse higher values.
If the PMU doesn't support FEAT_PMUv3_TH, then threshold_max will read
0, and attempting to set a threshold value will also result in an error.
threshold_max will also read as 0 on aarch32 guests, even if the host
is running on hardware with the feature.