[PATCH 5/5] arm/perfevents: implement perf event support for ARMv6

[Jean Pihet]

Hi Will,

On Wednesday 27 January 2010 18:26:27 Will Deacon wrote:
> Hi Jean,
>
> * Jean Pihet wrote:
> > Here is the latest version of the patch, after review on the ML.
> > Adds the Performance Events support for ARMv7 processor, using
> > the PMNC unit in HW.
>
> I tested this on a dual-core Cortex-A9 [Realview PBX board].
> One thing I noticed was that, even if you don't add the PMU IRQs to
> kernel/pmu.c, perf will still report event counts [I guess this is
> due to sampling on context switch etc].
Yes, Perf Events uses the timer interrupts and the scheduler to control the 
events to be traced. The result is a really low IRQ count, which is good on 
the Cortex-A8 PMUs units that have the HW problem (known as errata).

> However, if the IRQs are 
> defined, but for some reason we fail to request them, then the
> armpmu_reserve_hardware function will fail.
That is the expected behaviour, isn't it?
Why is the PMU request failing? That is worth investigating. I never had that 
problem on the Cortex-A8. Is it caused because of the multicore?

> Actually, the return 
> value appears to be uninitialised if you don't have any IRQs defined.
If the PMU request fails the IRQ should not be requested, so I think it is ok. 
Is that correct?

>
> Anyway, apart from that, it appeared to work fine.
Good!

Thanks for testing!
Jean

> Tested-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon at arm.com>
>
> Will