Re: [PATCH v4 05/12] arm-cci: PMU: Add support for transactions

From: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
To: "Suzuki K. Poulose" <Suzuki.Poulose@arm.com>
Cc: linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mark.rutland@arm.com,
	punit.agrawal@arm.com, arm@kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 05/12] arm-cci: PMU: Add support for transactions
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:47:51 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20151218114751.GP6344@twins.programming.kicks-ass.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <5673E6C9.7040304@arm.com>

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 10:58:17AM +0000, Suzuki K. Poulose wrote:

> We have a global Enable/Disable for CCI PMU and thats what we use
> currently. To be able to reprogram the counters with the event period
> (we program the counter with a specific count in pmu::start() and at
> overflow irq handler, not to be confused with the sampling period, which
> is not supported), we need to be sure that the counter value has been updated.
> 
> May be we could check the event->hw->state to see if we need to reprogram it.

Right, have a look at arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_event.c:x86_pmu_enable()

If there's new events, it does two loops over the events.

The first loop does stop(PERF_EF_UPDATE) any counter that got moved.
The second loop does start(PERF_EF_RELOAD) on moved and new events.

The PERF_HES_ARCH bit is used to preserve the stopped state of counters
that were programmed but temporarily stopped.