tools/perf/Documentation/perf-list.txt

perf-list(1)
============

NAME
----
perf-list - List all symbolic event types

SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
'perf list' [hw|sw|cache|tracepoint|event_glob]

DESCRIPTION
-----------
This command displays the symbolic event types which can be selected in the
various perf commands with the -e option.

EVENT MODIFIERS
---------------

Events can optionally have a modifer by appending a colon and one or
more modifiers.  Modifiers allow the user to restrict when events are
counted with 'u' for user-space, 'k' for kernel, 'h' for hypervisor.
Additional modifiers are 'G' for guest counting (in KVM guests) and 'H'
for host counting (not in KVM guests).

The 'p' modifier can be used for specifying how precise the instruction
address should be. The 'p' modifier is currently only implemented for
Intel PEBS and can be specified multiple times:
  0 - SAMPLE_IP can have arbitrary skid
  1 - SAMPLE_IP must have constant skid
  2 - SAMPLE_IP requested to have 0 skid
  3 - SAMPLE_IP must have 0 skid

The PEBS implementation now supports up to 2.

RAW HARDWARE EVENT DESCRIPTOR
-----------------------------
Even when an event is not available in a symbolic form within perf right now,
it can be encoded in a per processor specific way.

For instance For x86 CPUs NNN represents the raw register encoding with the
layout of IA32_PERFEVTSELx MSRs (see [Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual Volume 3B: System Programming Guide] Figure 30-1 Layout
of IA32_PERFEVTSELx MSRs) or AMD's PerfEvtSeln (see [AMD64 Architecture Programmer’s Manual Volume 2: System Programming], Page 344,
Figure 13-7 Performance Event-Select Register (PerfEvtSeln)).

Example:

If the Intel docs for a QM720 Core i7 describe an event as:

  Event  Umask  Event Mask
  Num.   Value  Mnemonic    Description                        Comment

  A8H      01H  LSD.UOPS    Counts the number of micro-ops     Use cmask=1 and
                            delivered by loop stream detector  invert to count
                                                               cycles

raw encoding of 0x1A8 can be used:

 perf stat -e r1a8 -a sleep 1
 perf record -e r1a8 ...

You should refer to the processor specific documentation for getting these
details. Some of them are referenced in the SEE ALSO section below.

OPTIONS
-------

Without options all known events will be listed.

To limit the list use:

. 'hw' or 'hardware' to list hardware events such as cache-misses, etc.

. 'sw' or 'software' to list software events such as context switches, etc.

. 'cache' or 'hwcache' to list hardware cache events such as L1-dcache-loads, etc.

. 'tracepoint' to list all tracepoint events, alternatively use
  'subsys_glob:event_glob' to filter by tracepoint subsystems such as sched,
  block, etc.

. If none of the above is matched, it will apply the supplied glob to all
  events, printing the ones that match.

One or more types can be used at the same time, listing the events for the
types specified.

SEE ALSO
--------
linkperf:perf-stat[1], linkperf:perf-top[1],
linkperf:perf-record[1],
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/manual/253669.pdf[Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual Volume 3B: System Programming Guide],
http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/24593.pdf[AMD64 Architecture Programmer’s Manual Volume 2: System Programming]