Background:
The pm_ev field of struct pmc_op_pmcallocate and struct pmc
traditionally contains the index of the chosen event, corresponding to
the __PMC_EVENTS array in pmc_events.h. This is a static list of events,
maintained by FreeBSD.
In the usual case, libpmc translates the user supplied event name
(string) into the pm_ev index, which is passed as an argument to the
allocation syscall. On the kernel side, the allocation method for the
relevant hwpmc class translates the given index into the event code that
will be written to an event selection register.
In 2018, a new source of performance event definitions was introduced:
the pmu-events json files, which are maintained by the Linux kernel. The
result was better coverage for newer Intel processors with a reduced
maintenance burden for libpmc/hwpmc. Intel and AMD CPUs were
unconditionally switched to allocate events from pmu-events instead of
the traditional scheme (959826ca1bb0a, 81eb4dcf9e0d).
Under the pmu-events scheme, the pm_ev field contains an index
corresponding to the selected event from the pmu-events table, something
which the kernel has no knowledge of. The configuration for the
performance counting registers is instead passed via class-dependent
fields (struct pmc_md_op_pmcallocate).
In 2021 I changed the allocation logic so that it would attempt to
pull from the pmu-events table first, and fall-back to the traditional
method (dfb4fb41166bc3). Later, pmu-events support for arm64 and power8
CPUs was added (28dd6730a5d6 and b48a2770d48b).
The problem that remains is that the pm_ev field is overloaded, without
a definitive way to determine whether the event allocation came from the
pmu-events table or FreeBSD's statically-defined PMC events. This
resulted in a recent fix, 21f7397a61f7.
Change:
To disambiguate these two supported but separate use-cases, add a new
flag, PMC_F_EV_PMU, to be set as part of the allocation, indicating that
the event index came from pmu-events.
This is useful in two ways:
- On the kernel side, we can validate the syscall arguments better. Some classes support only the traditional event scheme (e.g. hwpmc_armv7), while others support only the pmu-events method (e.g. hwpmc_core for Intel). We can now check for this. The hwpmc_arm64 class supports both methods, so the new flag supersedes the existing MD flag, PM_MD_EVENT_RAW.
- The flag will be tracked in struct pmc for the duration of its lifetime, meaning it is communicated back to userspace. This allows libpmc to perform the reverse index-to-event-name translation without speculating about the meaning of the index value.
Adding the flag is a backwards-incompatible ABI change. We very recently
bumped the major version of the hwpmc module, so this breakage is
totally acceptable.