[PATCH v4 4/6] perf arm-spe: Assign kernel time to synthesized event

[Leo Yan]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 05:46:31PM +0300, James Clark wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/04/2021 12:10, Leo Yan wrote:
> > In current code, it assigns the arch timer counter to the synthesized
> > samples Arm SPE trace, thus the samples don't contain the kernel time
> > but only contain the raw counter value.
> > 
> > To fix the issue, this patch converts the timer counter to kernel time
> > and assigns it to sample timestamp.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Leo Yan <leo.yan at linaro.org>
> > ---
> >  tools/perf/util/arm-spe.c | 2 +-
> >  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/tools/perf/util/arm-spe.c b/tools/perf/util/arm-spe.c
> > index 23714cf0380e..c13a89f06ab8 100644
> > --- a/tools/perf/util/arm-spe.c
> > +++ b/tools/perf/util/arm-spe.c
> > @@ -234,7 +234,7 @@ static void arm_spe_prep_sample(struct arm_spe *spe,
> >  	struct arm_spe_record *record = &speq->decoder->record;
> >  
> >  	if (!spe->timeless_decoding)
> > -		sample->time = speq->timestamp;
> > +		sample->time = tsc_to_perf_time(record->timestamp, &spe->tc);
> 
> 
> I noticed that in arm_spe_recording_options() the TIME sample bit is set regardless of any options.
> I don't know of a way to remove this, and if there isn't, does that mean that all the code in this
> file that looks at spe->timeless_decoding is untested and has never been hit?
> 
> Unless there is a way to get a perf file with only the AUXTRACE event and no others? I think that one
> might have no timestamp set. Otherwise other events will always have timestamps so spe->timeless_decoding
> is always false.

Good point.  To be honest, I never noticed this issue until you
mentioned this.

We should fix for the "timeless" flow; and it's questionable for the
function arm_spe_recording_options(), except for setting
PERF_SAMPLE_TIME, it also hard codes for setting
PERF_SAMPLE_CPU and PERF_SAMPLE_TID.  Might need to carefully go
through this function.

Thanks,
Leo