Date: September 13, 2009 Stephane,
I have a few questions about perfmon2. First off, I apologize for not having read the source code; I'm certain that the answers to at least some of these questions are contained in it. Still, it may be helpful to create a record online to help others better understand where perfmon2 stands at this point. I read your 20-month old presentation at http://perfmon2.sourceforge.net/perfmon2-20080124.pdf Q1: Is there a newer document available that describes perfmon2? Q2: The presentation states that Perfmon2 is to become "the Linux monitoring interface." Has this become true? Q3: Just looking at provided functionality, and ignoring support by higher-level tools, would perfmon2 have the ability to replace the perfctr library and kernel patch? Q4: Can perfmon2 replace the Intel Vtune driver, just based on functionality? Q5: Does perfmon2 support direct access to virtualized performance counter registers in user mode in the manner perfctr does? Slides 16 and 27 appear to imply that. In perfctr, such access is supported by allowing a thread read-only access from user mode to the state container structure into which the context switch code saved those registers. Does perfmon2 support a similar approach, or do all accesses to performance counter registers require a system call? Q6: Slides 32-34 list tools supporting perfmon2. Notably absent are the two major vendor tools Intel's VTune and AMD's Code Analyst. The former uses their own driver, and the latter relies on perfctr (to my knowledge). What is known about support for perfmon2 in these products? Q7: The slides discuss that perfmon2 support is slated for inclusion into commercial Linux distributions. Are there already any commercial Linux distribution that have perfmon2 support in their kernels? If so, which ones? Q8: Slide 6 points out that performance counters may need to be accessed in virtualized environments. What support, if any, does perfmon2 provide for accessing performance counters as of now? Specifically, is it possible to use perfmon2 in a Xen/Guest kernel; if not, is anybody working on adding such support? What about KVM? Thank you! - Godmar ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ perfmon2-devel mailing list perfmon2-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/perfmon2-devel
