linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 5/5] perf, x86: Prefer RDPMC over RDMSR for reading counters

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Date:	Wed, 6 Jun 2012 07:41:32 -0700
From:	Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>
To:	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>
Cc:	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	eranian@...gle.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 5/5] perf, x86: Prefer RDPMC over RDMSR for reading
 counters

On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 04:21:12PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-06-06 at 07:16 -0700, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 12:46:19PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2012-06-05 at 17:56 -0700, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > > From: Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>
> > > > 
> > > > RDPMC is much faster than RDMSR for reading performance counters,
> > > > since it's not serializing.  Use it if possible in the perf handler.
> > > > 
> > > > Only tested on Sandy Bridge, so I only enabled it there so far.
> > > 
> > > That's just stupid.. I took Vince's patch from a while back.
> > 
> > What do you mean? It's significantly faster to read the counters this
> > way, because it avoids serialization and other overhead. 
> 
> What I'm saying is you only enabling it for snb and being too lazy to
> test anything else. Nor do I think its worth the conditional, all chips
> we have PMU support for have rdpmc instructions.

The reason I avoided it on everyone is that some old chips (NetBurst'ish 
I think) only were able to read the low 32bits through RDPMC.

If you prefer I can enable it on all the P6 cores?  I cannot test them
all however.

> 
> > Vince's patch only enabled it for user space I believe, This is for lowering
> > the kernel PMI handler overhead.
> 
> No, his patch did the kernel thing. Furthermore he actually tested it on
> a bunch of machines.

Ok. I wasn't aware of that. But it's not merged, what happened to ti?

-Andi

-- 
ak@...ux.intel.com -- Speaking for myself only
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