tree 3c1151ef886d9b72d0a7b7b267d9f37c72d5f475
parent c6a389f123b9f68d605bb7e0f9b32ec1e3e14132
author Stephane Eranian <eranian@google.com> 1314280683 +0200
committer Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> 1314613713 +0200

perf events: Fix slow and broken cgroup context switch code

The current cgroup context switch code was incorrect leading
to bogus counts. Furthermore, as soon as there was an active
cgroup event on a CPU, the context switch cost on that CPU
would increase by a significant amount as demonstrated by a
simple ping/pong example:

 $ ./pong
 Both processes pinned to CPU1, running for 10s
 10684.51 ctxsw/s

Now start a cgroup perf stat:
 $ perf stat -e cycles,cycles -A -a -G test  -C 1 -- sleep 100

$ ./pong
 Both processes pinned to CPU1, running for 10s
 6674.61 ctxsw/s

That's a 37% penalty.

Note that pong is not even in the monitored cgroup.

The results shown by perf stat are bogus:
 $ perf stat -e cycles,cycles -A -a -G test  -C 1 -- sleep 100

 Performance counter stats for 'sleep 100':

 CPU1 <not counted> cycles   test
 CPU1 16,984,189,138 cycles  #    0.000 GHz

The second 'cycles' event should report a count @ CPU clock
(here 2.4GHz) as it is counting across all cgroups.

The patch below fixes the bogus accounting and bypasses any
cgroup switches in case the outgoing and incoming tasks are
in the same cgroup.

With this patch the same test now yields:
 $ ./pong
 Both processes pinned to CPU1, running for 10s
 10775.30 ctxsw/s

Start perf stat with cgroup:

 $ perf stat -e cycles,cycles -A -a -G test  -C 1 -- sleep 10

Run pong outside the cgroup:
 $ /pong
 Both processes pinned to CPU1, running for 10s
 10687.80 ctxsw/s

The penalty is now less than 2%.

And the results for perf stat are correct:

$ perf stat -e cycles,cycles -A -a -G test  -C 1 -- sleep 10

 Performance counter stats for 'sleep 10':

 CPU1 <not counted> cycles test #    0.000 GHz
 CPU1 23,933,981,448 cycles      #    0.000 GHz

Now perf stat reports the correct counts for
for the non cgroup event.

If we run pong inside the cgroup, then we also get the
correct counts:

$ perf stat -e cycles,cycles -A -a -G test  -C 1 -- sleep 10

 Performance counter stats for 'sleep 10':

 CPU1 22,297,726,205 cycles test #    0.000 GHz
 CPU1 23,933,981,448 cycles      #    0.000 GHz

      10.001457237 seconds time elapsed

Signed-off-by: Stephane Eranian <eranian@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20110825135803.GA4697@quad
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>