linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 5/6] hw-breakpoints: Arbitrate access to pmu following registers constraints

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Date:	Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:54:19 +0100
From:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
To:	Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>
Cc:	Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Prasad <prasad@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@...hat.com>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
	Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@....de>,
	Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@...il.com>,
	Li Zefan <lizf@...fujitsu.com>, Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>,
	Mike Galbraith <efault@....de>,
	Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...hat.com>,
	Paul Mundt <lethal@...ux-sh.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 5/6] hw-breakpoints: Arbitrate access to pmu following
	registers constraints

On Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 07:56:21AM +1100, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-11-05 at 21:58 +1100, Paul Mackerras wrote:
> > Frederic Weisbecker writes:
> > 
> > > Allow or refuse to build a counter using the breakpoints pmu following
> > > given constraints.
> > 
> > As far as I can see, you assume each CPU has HBP_NUM breakpoint
> > registers which are all interchangeable and can all be used either for
> > data breakpoints or instruction breakpoints.  Is that accurate?
> > 
> > If so, we'll need to extend it a bit for Power since we have some CPUs
> > that have one data breakpoint register and one instruction breakpoint
> > register.  In general on powerpc the instruction and data breakpoint
> > facilities are separate, i.e. we have no registers that can be used
> > for either.
> 
> Additionally, we have more fancy facilities that I don't see exposed at
> all through this interface (we are building an ad-hoc ptrace based
> interface today so that gdb can make use of them) and we have one guy
> with crazy constraints that we don't know yet how to deal with:
> 
> Among others features:
> 
>  - Pairing of two data or instruction breakpoints to create a ranges
> breakpoint
>  - Data value compare option
>  - Instruction value compare option



Yeah. The current generic interface is a draft. I'll try to write
something generic enough to fit in every archs needs.
This is needed before we expose its perf interface to userpace
anyway.

 
> And now the crazy constraints:
> 
>  - On one embedded core at least we have a case where the core has 4
> threads, but the data (4) and instruction (2) breakpoint registers are
> shared. The 'enable' bits are split so a given data breakpoint can be
> enabled only on some HW threads but that's about it.
> 
> I'm not sure if there's a realistic way to handle the later constraint
> though other than just not allowing use of the HW breakpoint function on
> those cores at all.
> 
> Ben.


Yeah this latter one is tricky. Not sure how to handle it either.
How are these hw-threads considered by the kernel core? As different
cpu?

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