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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+.. _perf_index:
+
+====
+Perf
+====
+
+Perf Event Attributes
+=====================
+
+:Author: Andrew Murray <andrew.murray@arm.com>
+:Date: 2019-03-06
+
+exclude_user
+------------
+
+This attribute excludes userspace.
+
+Userspace always runs at EL0 and thus this attribute will exclude EL0.
+
+
+exclude_kernel
+--------------
+
+This attribute excludes the kernel.
+
+The kernel runs at EL2 with VHE and EL1 without. Guest kernels always run
+at EL1.
+
+For the host this attribute will exclude EL1 and additionally EL2 on a VHE
+system.
+
+For the guest this attribute will exclude EL1. Please note that EL2 is
+never counted within a guest.
+
+
+exclude_hv
+----------
+
+This attribute excludes the hypervisor.
+
+For a VHE host this attribute is ignored as we consider the host kernel to
+be the hypervisor.
+
+For a non-VHE host this attribute will exclude EL2 as we consider the
+hypervisor to be any code that runs at EL2 which is predominantly used for
+guest/host transitions.
+
+For the guest this attribute has no effect. Please note that EL2 is
+never counted within a guest.
+
+
+exclude_host / exclude_guest
+----------------------------
+
+These attributes exclude the KVM host and guest, respectively.
+
+The KVM host may run at EL0 (userspace), EL1 (non-VHE kernel) and EL2 (VHE
+kernel or non-VHE hypervisor).
+
+The KVM guest may run at EL0 (userspace) and EL1 (kernel).
+
+Due to the overlapping exception levels between host and guests we cannot
+exclusively rely on the PMU's hardware exception filtering - therefore we
+must enable/disable counting on the entry and exit to the guest. This is
+performed differently on VHE and non-VHE systems.
+
+For non-VHE systems we exclude EL2 for exclude_host - upon entering and
+exiting the guest we disable/enable the event as appropriate based on the
+exclude_host and exclude_guest attributes.
+
+For VHE systems we exclude EL1 for exclude_guest and exclude both EL0,EL2
+for exclude_host. Upon entering and exiting the guest we modify the event
+to include/exclude EL0 as appropriate based on the exclude_host and
+exclude_guest attributes.
+
+The statements above also apply when these attributes are used within a
+non-VHE guest however please note that EL2 is never counted within a guest.
+
+
+Accuracy
+--------
+
+On non-VHE hosts we enable/disable counters on the entry/exit of host/guest
+transition at EL2 - however there is a period of time between
+enabling/disabling the counters and entering/exiting the guest. We are
+able to eliminate counters counting host events on the boundaries of guest
+entry/exit when counting guest events by filtering out EL2 for
+exclude_host. However when using !exclude_hv there is a small blackout
+window at the guest entry/exit where host events are not captured.
+
+On VHE systems there are no blackout windows.
+
+Perf Userspace PMU Hardware Counter Access
+==========================================
+
+Overview
+--------
+The perf userspace tool relies on the PMU to monitor events. It offers an
+abstraction layer over the hardware counters since the underlying
+implementation is cpu-dependent.
+Arm64 allows userspace tools to have access to the registers storing the
+hardware counters' values directly.
+
+This targets specifically self-monitoring tasks in order to reduce the overhead
+by directly accessing the registers without having to go through the kernel.
+
+How-to
+------
+The focus is set on the armv8 PMUv3 which makes sure that the access to the pmu
+registers is enabled and that the userspace has access to the relevant
+information in order to use them.
+
+In order to have access to the hardware counters, the global sysctl
+kernel/perf_user_access must first be enabled:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+ echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/perf_user_access
+
+It is necessary to open the event using the perf tool interface with config1:1
+attr bit set: the sys_perf_event_open syscall returns a fd which can
+subsequently be used with the mmap syscall in order to retrieve a page of memory
+containing information about the event. The PMU driver uses this page to expose
+to the user the hardware counter's index and other necessary data. Using this
+index enables the user to access the PMU registers using the `mrs` instruction.
+Access to the PMU registers is only valid while the sequence lock is unchanged.
+In particular, the PMSELR_EL0 register is zeroed each time the sequence lock is
+changed.
+
+The userspace access is supported in libperf using the perf_evsel__mmap()
+and perf_evsel__read() functions. See `tools/lib/perf/tests/test-evsel.c`_ for
+an example.
+
+About heterogeneous systems
+---------------------------
+On heterogeneous systems such as big.LITTLE, userspace PMU counter access can
+only be enabled when the tasks are pinned to a homogeneous subset of cores and
+the corresponding PMU instance is opened by specifying the 'type' attribute.
+The use of generic event types is not supported in this case.
+
+Have a look at `tools/perf/arch/arm64/tests/user-events.c`_ for an example. It
+can be run using the perf tool to check that the access to the registers works
+correctly from userspace:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+ perf test -v user
+
+About chained events and counter sizes
+--------------------------------------
+The user can request either a 32-bit (config1:0 == 0) or 64-bit (config1:0 == 1)
+counter along with userspace access. The sys_perf_event_open syscall will fail
+if a 64-bit counter is requested and the hardware doesn't support 64-bit
+counters. Chained events are not supported in conjunction with userspace counter
+access. If a 32-bit counter is requested on hardware with 64-bit counters, then
+userspace must treat the upper 32-bits read from the counter as UNKNOWN. The
+'pmc_width' field in the user page will indicate the valid width of the counter
+and should be used to mask the upper bits as needed.
+
+.. Links
+.. _tools/perf/arch/arm64/tests/user-events.c:
+ https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/tools/perf/arch/arm64/tests/user-events.c
+.. _tools/lib/perf/tests/test-evsel.c:
+ https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/tools/lib/perf/tests/test-evsel.c