linux-kernel - Re: ftrace global trace_pipe

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Date:   Tue, 24 Jul 2018 10:25:06 -0400
From:   Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
To:     Claudio <claudio.fontana@...wa.com>
Cc:     Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: ftrace global trace_pipe_raw

On Tue, 24 Jul 2018 10:23:16 -0400
Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org> wrote:

> > 
> > Would work in the direction of adding a global trace_pipe_raw be considered
> > for inclusion?  
> 
> The design of the lockless ring buffer requires not to be preempted,
> and that the data cannot be written to from more than one location. To
> do so, we make a per CPU buffer, and disable preemption when writing.
> This means that we have only one writer at a time. It can handle
> interrupts and NMIs, because they will finish before they return and
> this doesn't break the algorithm. But having writers from multiple CPUs
> would require locking or other heaving synchronization operations that
> will greatly reduce the speed of writing to the buffers (not to mention
> the cache thrashing).

And why would you need a single buffer? Note, we are working on making
libtracecmd.so that will allow applications to read the buffers and the
library will take care of the interleaving of the raw data. This should
hopefully be ready in about three months or so.

-- Steve