xref: /linux/tools/perf/pmu-events/README (revision f3a8b6645dc2e60d11f20c1c23afd964ff4e55ae)
1
2The contents of this directory allow users to specify PMU events in their
3CPUs by their symbolic names rather than raw event codes (see example below).
4
5The main program in this directory, is the 'jevents', which is built and
6executed _BEFORE_ the perf binary itself is built.
7
8The 'jevents' program tries to locate and process JSON files in the directory
9tree tools/perf/pmu-events/arch/foo.
10
11	- Regular files with '.json' extension in the name are assumed to be
12	  JSON files, each of which describes a set of PMU events.
13
14	- Regular files with basename starting with 'mapfile.csv' are assumed
15	  to be a CSV file that maps a specific CPU to its set of PMU events.
16	  (see below for mapfile format)
17
18	- Directories are traversed, but all other files are ignored.
19
20The PMU events supported by a CPU model are expected to grouped into topics
21such as Pipelining, Cache, Memory, Floating-point etc. All events for a topic
22should be placed in a separate JSON file - where the file name identifies
23the topic. Eg: "Floating-point.json".
24
25All the topic JSON files for a CPU model/family should be in a separate
26sub directory. Thus for the Silvermont X86 CPU:
27
28	$ ls tools/perf/pmu-events/arch/x86/Silvermont_core
29	Cache.json 	Memory.json 	Virtual-Memory.json
30	Frontend.json 	Pipeline.json
31
32Using the JSON files and the mapfile, 'jevents' generates the C source file,
33'pmu-events.c', which encodes the two sets of tables:
34
35	- Set of 'PMU events tables' for all known CPUs in the architecture,
36	  (one table like the following, per JSON file; table name 'pme_power8'
37	  is derived from JSON file name, 'power8.json').
38
39		struct pmu_event pme_power8[] = {
40
41			...
42
43			{
44				.name = "pm_1plus_ppc_cmpl",
45				.event = "event=0x100f2",
46				.desc = "1 or more ppc insts finished,",
47			},
48
49			...
50		}
51
52	- A 'mapping table' that maps each CPU of the architecture, to its
53	  'PMU events table'
54
55		struct pmu_events_map pmu_events_map[] = {
56		{
57			.cpuid = "004b0000",
58			.version = "1",
59			.type = "core",
60			.table = pme_power8
61		},
62			...
63
64		};
65
66After the 'pmu-events.c' is generated, it is compiled and the resulting
67'pmu-events.o' is added to 'libperf.a' which is then used to build perf.
68
69NOTES:
70	1. Several CPUs can support same set of events and hence use a common
71	   JSON file. Hence several entries in the pmu_events_map[] could map
72	   to a single 'PMU events table'.
73
74	2. The 'pmu-events.h' has an extern declaration for the mapping table
75	   and the generated 'pmu-events.c' defines this table.
76
77	3. _All_ known CPU tables for architecture are included in the perf
78	   binary.
79
80At run time, perf determines the actual CPU it is running on, finds the
81matching events table and builds aliases for those events. This allows
82users to specify events by their name:
83
84	$ perf stat -e pm_1plus_ppc_cmpl sleep 1
85
86where 'pm_1plus_ppc_cmpl' is a Power8 PMU event.
87
88In case of errors when processing files in the tools/perf/pmu-events/arch
89directory, 'jevents' tries to create an empty mapping file to allow the perf
90build to succeed even if the PMU event aliases cannot be used.
91
92However some errors in processing may cause the perf build to fail.
93
94Mapfile format
95===============
96
97The mapfile enables multiple CPU models to share a single set of PMU events.
98It is required even if such mapping is 1:1.
99
100The mapfile.csv format is expected to be:
101
102	Header line
103	CPUID,Version,Dir/path/name,Type
104
105where:
106
107	Comma:
108		is the required field delimiter (i.e other fields cannot
109		have commas within them).
110
111	Comments:
112		Lines in which the first character is either '\n' or '#'
113		are ignored.
114
115	Header line
116		The header line is the first line in the file, which is
117		always _IGNORED_. It can empty.
118
119	CPUID:
120		CPUID is an arch-specific char string, that can be used
121		to identify CPU (and associate it with a set of PMU events
122		it supports). Multiple CPUIDS can point to the same
123		File/path/name.json.
124
125		Example:
126			CPUID == 'GenuineIntel-6-2E' (on x86).
127			CPUID == '004b0100' (PVR value in Powerpc)
128	Version:
129		is the Version of the mapfile.
130
131	Dir/path/name:
132		is the pathname to the directory containing the CPU's JSON
133		files, relative to the directory containing the mapfile.csv
134
135	Type:
136		indicates whether the events or "core" or "uncore" events.
137
138
139	Eg:
140
141	$ grep Silvermont tools/perf/pmu-events/arch/x86/mapfile.csv
142	GenuineIntel-6-37,V13,Silvermont_core,core
143	GenuineIntel-6-4D,V13,Silvermont_core,core
144	GenuineIntel-6-4C,V13,Silvermont_core,core
145
146	i.e the three CPU models use the JSON files (i.e PMU events) listed
147	in the directory 'tools/perf/pmu-events/arch/x86/Silvermont_core'.
148