Re: [Xen-devel] Perfctr-Xen framework for permonace analysis

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:36:07PM -0700, Ruslan Nikolaev wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I want to make an announcement about new perfomance monitoring framework.
> 
> Perfctr-Xen framework that enables per-thread performance analysis in Xen. 
> Current version is capable of properly virtualizing counters in both 
> paravirtualized and HVM modes. It is based on perfctr (which is a library and 
> kernel module for non-virtualized guests), ported to Xen, and extended to 
> work properly in virtualized environment. Both accumulative and interrupt 
> modes counting (profiling) are supported.
> 
> The advantage of Perfctr-Xen is that it does not require specific HVM 
> extensions which are needed for vpmu driver, can work in paravirtualized 
> mode, and it also quite universal: works with many common tools such as PAPI, 
> HPCToolkit, TAU PerfExplorer. It supports proper per-domain and per-thread 
> virtualization. It is light-weight, supports wide range of CPUs, does not 
> require save-and-restore for accumulative mode of counting (it uses counter 
> offsetting), avoids expensive hypercalls and counter re-programming in 
> certain circumstances (when threads are counting the same type of events). In 
> addition, some techniques are employed to account for the overhead caused by 
> the framework itself. This makes measurements quite accurate.
> 
> Perfctr-Xen consists of series of patches that need to be applied to Xen, 
> Linux, perfctr. There are available at:
> http://people.cs.vt.edu/~rnikola/
> 
> The code is available under LGPL. It would be great to discuss if and how it 
> can be integrated into Xen.


So I read your guys paper and found it interesting. But I am bit confused about 
the baremetal
state of perf monitoring tool. Which one is in the upstream kernel (3.0) that 
runs when you
use 'perftop' and like?

> 
> The publication regarding Perfctr-Xen is at:
> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1952687
> 
> Thanks,
> Ruslan Nikolaev
> 
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