This patch implements support for Intel Precise Event Based Sampling,
which is an alternative counter mode in which the counter triggers a
hardware assist to collect information on events. The hardware assist
takes a trap like snapshot of a subset of the machine registers.
This data is written to the Intel Debug-Store, which can be programmed
with a data threshold at which to raise a PMI.
With the PEBS hardware assist being trap like, the reported IP is always
one instruction after the actual instruction that triggered the event.
This implements a simple PEBS model that always takes a single PEBS event
at a time. This is done so that the interaction with the rest of the
system is as expected (freq adjust, period randomization, lbr,
callchains, etc.).
It adds an ABI element: perf_event_attr::precise, which indicates that we
wish to use this (constrained, but precise) mode.
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@infradead.org>
Cc: paulus@samba.org
Cc: eranian@google.com
Cc: robert.richter@amd.com
Cc: fweisbec@gmail.com
LKML-Reference: <20100304140100.392111285@chello.nl>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
ca037701a0