Re: [PATCH v9] pgo: add clang's Profile Guided Optimization infrastructure

[Bill Wendling <morbo@google.com>]

On Sat, Jun 12, 2021 at 9:59 AM Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 02:17:04PM -0700, Bill Wendling wrote:
> > From: Sami Tolvanen <samitolvanen@google.com>
> >
> > Enable the use of clang's Profile-Guided Optimization[1]. To generate a
> > profile, the kernel is instrumented with PGO counters, a representative
> > workload is run, and the raw profile data is collected from
> > /sys/kernel/debug/pgo/profraw.
> >
> > The raw profile data must be processed by clang's "llvm-profdata" tool
> > before it can be used during recompilation:
> >
> >   $ cp /sys/kernel/debug/pgo/profraw vmlinux.profraw
> >   $ llvm-profdata merge --output=vmlinux.profdata vmlinux.profraw
> >
> > Multiple raw profiles may be merged during this step.
> >
> > The data can now be used by the compiler:
> >
> >   $ make LLVM=1 KCFLAGS=-fprofile-use=vmlinux.profdata ...
> >
> > This initial submission is restricted to x86, as that's the platform we
> > know works. This restriction can be lifted once other platforms have
> > been verified to work with PGO.
>
> *sigh*, and not a single x86 person on Cc, how nice :-/
>
This tool is generic and, despite the fact that it's first enabled for
x86, it contains no x86-specific code. The reason we're restricting it
to x86 is because it's the platform we tested on.

> > Note that this method of profiling the kernel is clang-native, unlike
> > the clang support in kernel/gcov.
> >
> > [1] https://clang.llvm.org/docs/UsersManual.html#profile-guided-optimization
>
> Also, and I don't see this answered *anywhere*, why are you not using
> perf for this? Your link even mentions Sampling Profilers (and I happen
> to know there's been significant effort to make perf output work as
> input for the PGO passes of the various compilers).
>
Instruction-based (non-sampling) profiling gives us a better
context-sensitive profile, making PGO more impactful. It's also useful
for coverage whereas sampling profiles cannot.

> > Signed-off-by: Sami Tolvanen <samitolvanen@google.com>
> > Co-developed-by: Bill Wendling <morbo@google.com>
> > Signed-off-by: Bill Wendling <morbo@google.com>
> > Tested-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
> > Reviewed-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
> > Reviewed-by: Fangrui Song <maskray@google.com>
> > ---
> >  Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst     |   1 +
> >  Documentation/dev-tools/pgo.rst       | 127 +++++++++
> >  MAINTAINERS                           |   9 +
> >  Makefile                              |   3 +
> >  arch/Kconfig                          |   1 +
> >  arch/x86/Kconfig                      |   1 +
> >  arch/x86/boot/Makefile                |   1 +
> >  arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile     |   1 +
> >  arch/x86/crypto/Makefile              |   4 +
> >  arch/x86/entry/vdso/Makefile          |   1 +
> >  arch/x86/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S         |   2 +
> >  arch/x86/platform/efi/Makefile        |   1 +
> >  arch/x86/purgatory/Makefile           |   1 +
> >  arch/x86/realmode/rm/Makefile         |   1 +
> >  arch/x86/um/vdso/Makefile             |   1 +
> >  drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/Makefile |   1 +
> >  include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h     |  34 +++
> >  kernel/Makefile                       |   1 +
> >  kernel/pgo/Kconfig                    |  35 +++
> >  kernel/pgo/Makefile                   |   5 +
> >  kernel/pgo/fs.c                       | 389 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >  kernel/pgo/instrument.c               | 189 +++++++++++++
> >  kernel/pgo/pgo.h                      | 203 ++++++++++++++
> >  scripts/Makefile.lib                  |  10 +
> >  24 files changed, 1022 insertions(+)
> >  create mode 100644 Documentation/dev-tools/pgo.rst
> >  create mode 100644 kernel/pgo/Kconfig
> >  create mode 100644 kernel/pgo/Makefile
> >  create mode 100644 kernel/pgo/fs.c
> >  create mode 100644 kernel/pgo/instrument.c
> >  create mode 100644 kernel/pgo/pgo.h
>
> > --- a/Makefile
> > +++ b/Makefile
> > @@ -660,6 +660,9 @@ endif # KBUILD_EXTMOD
> >  # Defaults to vmlinux, but the arch makefile usually adds further targets
> >  all: vmlinux
> >
> > +CFLAGS_PGO_CLANG := -fprofile-generate
> > +export CFLAGS_PGO_CLANG
> > +
> >  CFLAGS_GCOV  := -fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage \
> >       $(call cc-option,-fno-tree-loop-im) \
> >       $(call cc-disable-warning,maybe-uninitialized,)
>
> And which of the many flags in noinstr disables this?
>
These flags aren't used with PGO. So there's no need to disable them.

> Basically I would like to NAK this whole thing until someone can
> adequately explain the interaction with noinstr and why we need those
> many lines of kernel code and can't simply use perf for this.

-bw