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Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] perf mem: Support HITM for when mem_lvl_num is
 used
To:     Ali Saidi <alisaidi@amazon.com>
Cc:     Nick.Forrington@arm.com, acme@kernel.org,
        alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com, andrew.kilroy@arm.com,
        benh@kernel.crashing.org, james.clark@arm.com,
        john.garry@huawei.com, jolsa@kernel.org, kjain@linux.ibm.com,
        leo.yan@linaro.org, lihuafei1@huawei.com,
        linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-perf-users@vger.kernel.org, mark.rutland@arm.com,
        mathieu.poirier@linaro.org, mingo@redhat.com, namhyung@kernel.org,
        peterz@infradead.org, will@kernel.org, yao.jin@linux.intel.com
References: <df73fb93-3892-6713-8ebe-bc57a861ec5d@arm.com>
 <20220314183721.3198-1-alisaidi@amazon.com>
From:   German Gomez <german.gomez@arm.com>
Message-ID: <172ce478-b539-2aa4-0470-1b96c6b8169b@arm.com>
Date:   Tue, 15 Mar 2022 18:44:10 +0000
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On 14/03/2022 18:37, Ali Saidi wrote:
> Hi German and Leo,
>
> On   Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:00:13 +0000, German Gomez wrote:
>> Hi Leo, Ali
>>
>> On 14/03/2022 06:33, Leo Yan wrote:
>>> On Sun, Mar 13, 2022 at 07:19:33PM +0000, Ali Saidi wrote:
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>>>>> +			if (lvl & P(LVL, L3) || lnum == P(LVLNUM, L4)) {
>>>>>> According to a comment in the previous patch, using L4 is specific to Neoverse, right?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Maybe we need to distinguish the Neoverse case from the generic one here as well
>>>>>>
>>>>>> if (is_neoverse)
>>>>>> // treat L4 as llc
>>>>>> else
>>>>>> // treat L3 as llc
>>>>> I personally think it's not good idea to distinguish platforms in the decoding code.
>>>> I agree here. The more we talk about this, the more I'm wondering if we're
>>>> spending too much code solving a problem that doesn't exist. I know of no
>>>> Neoverse systems that actually have 4 cache levels, they all actually have three
>>>> even though it's technically possible to have four.  I have some doubts anyone
>>>> will actually build four levels of cache and perhaps the most prudent path here
>>>> is to assume only three levels (and adjust the previous patch) until someone 
>>>> actually produces a system with four levels instead of a lot of code that is
>>>> never actually exercised?
>>> I am not right person to say L4 cache is not implemented in Neoverse
>>> platforms; my guess for a "System cache" data source might be L3 or
>>> L4 and it is a implementation dependent.  Maybe German or Arm mates
>>> could confirm for this.
>> I had a look at the TRMs for the N1[1], V1[2] and N2[3] Neoverse cores
>> (specifically the LL_CACHE_RD pmu events). If we were to assign a number
>> to the system cache (assuming all caches are implemented):
>>
>> *For N1*, if L2 and L3 are implemented, system cache would follow at *L4*
> To date no one has built 4 level though. Everyone has only built three.

The N1SDP board advertises 4 levels (we use it regularly for testing perf patches)

| $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cache/index4/{level,shared_cpu_list}
| 4
| 0-3

Would it be a good idea to obtain the system cache level# from sysfs?

>> *For V1 and N2*, if L2 is implemented, system cache would follow at *L3*
>> (these don't seem to have the same/similar per-cluster L3 cache from the N1)
> And in the future they're not able to build >3. German and Leo if there aren't
> strong objections I think the best path forward is for me to respin these
> assuming only 3 levels and if someone builds 4 in a far-off-future we can always
> change the implementation then. Agreed?
>
> Thanks,
> Ali
>