Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753580Ab0KFUvS (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 Nov 2010 16:51:18 -0400 Received: from aspirin.dii.utk.edu ([160.36.0.81]:40893 "EHLO aspirin.dii.utk.edu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753417Ab0KFUvN (ORCPT ); Sat, 6 Nov 2010 16:51:13 -0400 Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2010 16:50:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Vince Weaver To: Francis Moreau cc: Victor Jimenez , Reid Kleckner , Frederic Weisbecker , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Ingo Molnar , Peter Zijlstra , Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo , Stephane Eranian , linux-perf-users@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: perf tools miscellaneous questions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (DEB 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1834 Lines: 41 This is rapidly getting of topic, especially for linux-kernel On Sat, 6 Nov 2010, Francis Moreau wrote: > Specially since 'llc-loads-misses' is and should be self speaking. Not necessarily. Does "last level" mean the common L2 or the shared L3? Do the misses count prefetch misses? Do the misses count coherency actions or else just "normal" cache accesses? Does your processor count multiple loads from some single instructions [unfortunately, many do]. Most events are poorly documented, if at all. And the Linux kernel predefined event list is loosely based upon the intel architectural events, which not every processor has and I've heard from insiders saying that you should be very careful for the results from those events. Also as far as I know there hasn't been much validation work on whether the events return useful values. No chip company will guarantee the values returned by performance counters; they are more or less a bonus feature that works most of the time but you never really know the accuracy of what you are reading out of them. > Could you point out the best architecture manual for it which describe > the raw events ? For your Core2 you want the Intel Software Developer's Manual, volume 2B. Google should find it. > BTW, I'm wondering if event names are coherent across the different > architectures supported by Linux. Nope. They aren't even consistent across the same chip company. For example, Core2 and Nehalem have completely different event names, and even between Nehalem and Westmere there are incompatible changes. Vince -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/