On 06/02/2014 06:29 PM, Stephane Eranian wrote:
> On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 10:04 AM, Anshuman Khandual
> <khand...@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
>> On 05/27/2014 05:39 PM, Stephane Eranian wrote:
>>> I have been looking at those patches and ran some tests.
>>> And I found a few issues so far.
>>>
>>> I am running:
>>> $ perf record -j any_ret -e cycles:u test_program
>>> $ perf report -D
>>>
>>> Most entries are okay and match the filter, however some do not make sense:
>>>
>>> 3642586996762 0x15d0 [0x108]: PERF_RECORD_SAMPLE(IP, 2): 17921/17921:
>>> 0x10001170 period: 613678 addr: 0
>>> .... branch stack: nr:9
>>> ..... 0: 00000000100011cc -> 0000000010000e38
>>> ..... 1: 0000000010001150 -> 00000000100011bc
>>> ..... 2: 0000000010001208 -> 0000000010000e38
>>> ..... 3: 0000000010001160 -> 00000000100011f8
>>> ..... 4: 00000000100011cc -> 0000000010000e38
>>> ..... 5: 0000000010001150 -> 00000000100011bc
>>> ..... 6: 0000000010001208 -> 0000000010000e38
>>> ..... 7: 0000000010001160 -> 00000000100011f8
>>> ..... 8: 0000000000000000 -> 0000000010001160
>>> ^^^^^^
>>> Entry 8 does not make sense, unless 0x0 is a valid return branch
>>> instruction address.
>>> If an address is invalid, the whole entry needs to be eliminated. It
>>> is okay to have
>>> less than the max number of entries supported by HW.
>>
>> Hey Stephane,
>>
>> Okay. The same behaviour is also reflected in the test results what I have
>> shared in the patchset. Here is that section.
>>
>> (3) perf record -j any_ret -e branch-misses:u ./cprog
>>
>> # Overhead Command Source Shared Object Source Symbol Target
>> Shared Object Target Symbol
>> # ........ ....... .................... .....................
>> .................... .....................
>> #
>> 15.61% cprog [unknown] [.] 00000000 cprog
>> [.] sw_3_1
>> 6.28% cprog cprog [.] symbol2 cprog
>> [.] hw_1_2
>> 6.28% cprog cprog [.] ctr_addr cprog
>> [.] sw_4_1
>> 6.26% cprog cprog [.] success_3_1_3 cprog
>> [.] sw_3_1
>> 6.24% cprog cprog [.] symbol1 cprog
>> [.] hw_1_1
>> 6.24% cprog cprog [.] sw_4_2 cprog
>> [.] callme
>> 6.21% cprog [unknown] [.] 00000000 cprog
>> [.] callme
>> 6.19% cprog cprog [.] lr_addr cprog
>> [.] sw_4_2
>> 3.16% cprog cprog [.] hw_1_2 cprog
>> [.] callme
>> 3.15% cprog cprog [.] success_3_1_1 cprog
>> [.] sw_3_1
>> 3.15% cprog cprog [.] sw_4_1 cprog
>> [.] callme
>> 3.14% cprog cprog [.] callme cprog
>> [.] main
>> 3.13% cprog cprog [.] hw_1_1 cprog
>> [.] callme
>>
>> So a lot of samples above have 0x0 as the "from" address. This originates
>> from the code
>> section here inside the function "power_pmu_bhrb_read", where we hit two
>> back to back
>
> Could you explain the back-to-back case a bit more here?
> Back-to-back returns to me means something like:
>
> int foo()
> {
> ...
> return bar();
> }
>
> int bar()
> {
> return 0;
> }
>
> Not counting the leaf optimization here, bar return to foo which
> immediately returns: 2 back-2-back returns.
> Is that the case you're talking about here?
>
No. Filtering of return branches has been implemented in SW only. So PMU as
such does not capture
return only branches. It captures all the branches what it encounters. During
the capture process
PMU might *record* two back to back "target addresses" (without capturing the
from address for the
first one) for which we are unable to figure out the "from address". This
leaves us with one branch
record where we have the target address not from address and so we make it
zero. With the current
logic all branch records with "from address" as zero get filtered through and
become the part of the
final set. I was not too sure how to deal with these cases.
>> target addresses. So we zero out the from address for the first target
>> address and re-read
>> the second address over again. So thats how we get zero as the from address.
>> This is how the
>> HW capture the samples. I was reluctant to drop these samples but I agree
>> that these kind of
>> samples can be dropped if we need to.
>>
> I think we need to make it as simple as possible for tools, i.e.,
> avoid having to decode the
> disassembly to figure out what happened. Here address 0 is not exploitable.
Thats right. Dropping the branch record where we have only the target address
not the from address
might just solve this problem.
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