Re: [PATCH 0/4] perf tools: New comm infrastructure

From: Frederic Weisbecker
Date: Fri Sep 13 2013 - 08:46:27 EST


On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 03:32:34PM +0900, Namhyung Kim wrote:
> Hi Frederic,
>
> On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 22:29:39 +0200, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> > The way we handle hists sorted by comm is to first gather them by tid then
> > in the end merge/collapse hists that end up with the same comm.
> >
> > But merging hists has shown some performances issues, especially with callchain
> > where the operation can be very heavy.
> >
> > So this new comm infrastructure aims at removing comm collapses. It brings
> > two features:
> >
> > 1) Keep track of comms lifecycle by storing timestamps when the comms
> > are set. This way we can map the precise comm to any thread:time couple.
> > This only works if the PERF_SAMPLE_ID comes along comm and fork events,
> > otherwise we only track the latest comm set for a thread.
> >
> > This can provide us more precise comm sorted hists by distinguishing pre and
> > post exec timeframes into seperate hists for a single thread.
> >
> > Note that although the comm infrastructure is ready to do this, I haven't
> > yet made the perf tools support that. It's a TODO entry.
> >
> >
> > 2) Allocate comms only once instead of duplicating them for all threads sharing
> > a same one. Two threads having the same comm should now point to the same string.
> > As a result we can compare hists thread comm by address.
> >
> > The big upside is that we can now live sort comm hists instead of collapsing
> > them in the end of the processing.
> >
> > I've seen very nice performance results on perf report. Roughly a 1.5x to 2x
> > on perf report default stdio output with callchains.
> >
> > You can try this branch:
> >
> > git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/frederic/linux-dynticks.git
> > perf/comm
> >
> > May be merging that with Namhyung callchains patches could provide some
> > cumulative nice results.
>
> I got this:
>
> ui/browsers/hists.c: In function âhists__browser_titleâ:
> ui/browsers/hists.c:1258:10: error: passing argument 1 of âthread__comm_currâ discards âconstâ qualifier from pointer target type [-Werror]
> In file included from ui/browsers/../../util/sort.h:24:0,
> from ui/browsers/hists.c:11:
> ui/browsers/../../util/thread.h:39:13: note: expected âstruct thread *â but argument is of type âconst struct thread *â
> ui/browsers/hists.c: In function âperf_evsel__hists_browseâ:
> ui/browsers/hists.c:1581:9: error: passing argument 1 of âthread__comm_currâ discards âconstâ qualifier from pointer target type [-Werror]
> In file included from ui/browsers/../../util/sort.h:24:0,
> from ui/browsers/hists.c:11:
> ui/browsers/../../util/thread.h:39:13: note: expected âstruct thread *â but argument is of type âconst struct thread *â
> ui/browsers/hists.c:1704:10: error: passing argument 1 of âthread__comm_currâ discards âconstâ qualifier from pointer target type [-Werror]
> In file included from ui/browsers/../../util/sort.h:24:0,
> from ui/browsers/hists.c:11:
> ui/browsers/../../util/thread.h:39:13: note: expected âstruct thread *â but argument is of type âconst struct thread *â
> cc1: all warnings being treated as errors
> make: *** [ui/browsers/hists.o] Error 1
> make: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....

Oops, I'm missing the libs to build the ui, so I didn't see this. Will fix, thanks!

>
> Thanks,
> Namhyung
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