linux-kernel - Re: Overhead of ring buffer in Ftrace

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Date:   Tue, 6 Aug 2019 12:00:39 -0400
From:   Fang Zhou <timchou.hit@...il.com>
To:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Overhead of ring buffer in Ftrace

Any ideas or suggestions?

Best,
Tim

On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 1:41 AM Fang Zhou <timchou.hit@...il.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I’m currently using Ftrace with tracepoints to trace several events in
> kernel. But I found the tracing overhead is a little high.
>
> I found the major overhead comes from
> “local_dec(&cpu_buffer->committing);” in rb_end_commit() function.
> local_dec() will invoke atomic_long_dec(), which finally performs
> LOCK_PREFIX plus "DECQ" on this variable.
>
> I'm a little confused. cpu_buffer is a per-cpu buffer. Therefore, I
> cannot come up with a scenario that two core runs INC or DEC on the
> same per-cpu value at the same time.
> So, why do we use such heavy-overhead operation here? Can we just
> simply use "DECQ" without LOCK_PREFIX?
>
> Thanks,
> Tim