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Date:   Tue, 22 Nov 2022 15:11:35 +0800
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Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 0/6] Add metrics for neoverse-n2
To:     James Clark <james.clark@arm.com>,
        nick Forrington <Nick.Forrington@arm.com>,
        Jumana MP <Jumana.MP@arm.com>,
        John Garry <john.g.garry@oracle.com>,
        Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>
Cc:     Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>, Mike Leach <mike.leach@linaro.org>,
        Leo Yan <leo.yan@linaro.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
        Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>,
        Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com>,
        Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org>,
        Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>,
        Andrew Kilroy <andrew.kilroy@arm.com>,
        Shuai Xue <xueshuai@linux.alibaba.com>,
        Zhuo Song <zhuo.song@linux.alibaba.com>,
        linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
        linux-perf-users@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
References: <1667214694-89839-1-git-send-email-renyu.zj@linux.alibaba.com>
 <d6553087-9157-21e8-6980-31bc8e44f066@arm.com>
 <d334a33c-b171-8381-3f75-e47392b6cba5@linux.alibaba.com>
 <107dda1a-6053-ea35-1e29-96ee6d049eb1@arm.com>
From:   Jing Zhang <renyu.zj@linux.alibaba.com>
In-Reply-To: <107dda1a-6053-ea35-1e29-96ee6d049eb1@arm.com>
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在 2022/11/21 下午7:51, James Clark 写道:
> 
> 
> On 16/11/2022 15:26, Jing Zhang wrote:
>>
>>
>> 在 2022/11/16 下午7:19, James Clark 写道:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 31/10/2022 11:11, Jing Zhang wrote:
>>>> This series add six metricgroups for neoverse-n2, among which, the
>>>> formula of topdown L1 is from the document:
>>>> https://documentation-service.arm.com/static/60250c7395978b529036da86?token=
>>>>
>>>> Since neoverse-n2 does not yet support topdown L2, metricgroups such
>>>> as Cache, TLB, Branch, InstructionsMix, and PEutilization are added to
>>>> help further analysis of performance bottlenecks.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Jing,
>>>
>>> Thanks for working on this, these metrics look ok to me in general,
>>> although we're currently working on publishing standardised metrics
>>> across all new cores as part of a new project in Arm. This will include
>>> N2, and our ones are very similar (or almost identical) to yours,
>>> barring slightly different group names, metric names, and differences in
>>> things like outputting topdown metrics as percentages.
>>>
>>> We plan to publish our standard metrics some time in the next 2 months.
>>> Would you consider holding off on merging this change so that we have
>>> consistant group names and units going forward? Otherwise N2 would be> the odd one out. I will send you the metrics when they are ready, and we
>>> will have a script to generate perf jsons from them, so you can review.
>>>
>>
>> Do you mean that after you release the new standard metrics, I remake my
>> patch referring to them, such as consistent group names and unit?
> 
> Hi Jing,
> 
> I was planning to submit the patch myself, but there will be a script to
> generate perf json files, so no manual work would be needed. Although
> this is complicated by the fact that we won't be publishing the fixed
> TopdownL1 metrics that you have for the existing N2 silicon so there
> would be a one time copy paste to fix that part.
> 
>>
>>
>>> We also have a slightly different forumula for one of the top down
>>> metrics which I think would be slightly more accurate. We don't have
>>
>>
>> The v2 version of the patchset updated the formula of topdown L1.
>> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/1668411720-3581-1-git-send-email-renyu.zj@linux.alibaba.com/
>>
>> The formula of the v2 version is more accurate than v1, and it has been
>> verified in our test environment. Can you share your formula first and we
>> can discuss it together? :)
> 
> I was looking at v2 but replied to the root of the thread by mistake. I
> also had it the wrong way round. So your version corrects for the errata
> on the current version of N2 (as you mentioned in the commit message).
> Our version would be if there is a future new silicon revision with that
> fixed, but it does have an extra improvement by subtracting the branch
> mispredicts.
> 
> Perf doesn't currently match the jsons based on silicon revision, so
> we'd have to add something in for that if a fixed silicon version is
> released. But this is another problem for another time.
> 

Hi James,

Let's do what Ian said, and you can improve it later with the standard metrics,
after the fixed silicon version is released.


> This is the frontend bound metric we have for future revisions:
> 
> 	"100 * ( (STALL_SLOT_FRONTEND/(CPU_CYCLES * 5)) - ((BR_MIS_PRED *
> 4)/CPU_CYCLES) )"
> 
> Other changes are, for example, your 'wasted' metric, we have
> 'bad_speculation', and without the
> cycles subtraction:
> 
> 	100 * ( ((1 - (OP_RETIRED/OP_SPEC)) * (1 - (STALL_SLOT/(CPU_CYCLES *
> 5)))) + ((BR_MIS_PRED * 4)/CPU_CYCLES) )
> 

Thanks for sharing your metric version, But I still wonder, is BR_MIS_PRED not classified
as frontend bound? How do you judge the extra improvement by subtracting branch mispredicts?

> And some more details filled in around the units, for example:
> 
>     {
>         "MetricName": "bad_speculation",
>         "MetricExpr": "100 * ( ((1 - (OP_RETIRED/OP_SPEC)) * (1 -
> (STALL_SLOT/(CPU_CYCLES * 5)))) + ((BR_MIS_PRED * 4)/CPU_CYCLES) )",
>         "BriefDescription": "Bad Speculation",
>         "PublicDescription": "This metric is the percentage of total
> slots that executed operations and didn't retire due to a pipeline
> flush.\nThis indicates cycles that were utilized but inefficiently.",
>         "MetricGroup": "TopdownL1",
>         "ScaleUnit": "1percent of slots"
>     },
> 

My "wasted" metric was changed according to the arm documentation description, it was originally
"bad_speculation".  I will change "wasted" back to "bad_speculation", if you wish.


Thanks,
Jing


> So ignoring the errata issue, the main reason to hold off is for
> consistency and churn because these metrics in this format will be
> released for all cores going forwards.
> 
> Thanks
> James
>