Re: [Xen-devel] Perfctr-Xen framework for permonace analysis

[George Dunlap <George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:36 PM, Ruslan Nikolaev
<nruslan_devel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I want to make an announcement about new perfomance monitoring framework.
>
> Perfctr-Xen framework that enables per-thread performance analysis in Xen. 
> Current version is capable of properly virtualizing counters in both 
> paravirtualized and HVM modes. It is based on perfctr (which is a library and 
> kernel module for non-virtualized guests), ported to Xen, and extended to 
> work properly in virtualized environment. Both accumulative and interrupt 
> modes counting (profiling) are supported.
>
> The advantage of Perfctr-Xen is that it does not require specific HVM 
> extensions which are needed for vpmu driver, can work in paravirtualized 
> mode, and it also quite universal: works with many common tools such as PAPI, 
> HPCToolkit, TAU PerfExplorer. It supports proper per-domain and per-thread 
> virtualization. It is light-weight, supports wide range of CPUs, does not 
> require save-and-restore for accumulative mode of counting (it uses counter 
> offsetting), avoids expensive hypercalls and counter re-programming in 
> certain circumstances (when threads are counting the same type of events). In 
> addition, some techniques are employed to account for the overhead caused by 
> the framework itself. This makes measurements quite accurate.
>
> Perfctr-Xen consists of series of patches that need to be applied to Xen, 
> Linux, perfctr. There are available at:
> http://people.cs.vt.edu/~rnikola/
>
> The code is available under LGPL. It would be great to discuss if and how it 
> can be integrated into Xen.
>
> The publication regarding Perfctr-Xen is at:
> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1952687

Do you have this paper, or perhaps a pre-print, posted somewhere not
behind a paywall?  Or a different document describing the library in
detail?  Most of us don't have subscriptions to ACM...

 -George

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