Thanks Kan! I will go through all your comments and update them accordingly. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Liang, Kan <kan.liang@linux.intel.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2023 9:49 AM
> To: Wang, Weilin <weilin.wang@intel.com>; Ian Rogers
> <irogers@google.com>; Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>; Ingo Molnar
> <mingo@redhat.com>; Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org>;
> Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com>; Jiri Olsa
> <jolsa@kernel.org>; Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>; Hunter, Adrian
> <adrian.hunter@intel.com>
> Cc: linux-perf-users@vger.kernel.org; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; Taylor,
> Perry <perry.taylor@intel.com>; Alt, Samantha <samantha.alt@intel.com>;
> Biggers, Caleb <caleb.biggers@intel.com>; Mark Rutland
> <mark.rutland@arm.com>
> Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 00/25] Perf stat metric grouping with hardware
> information
> 
> 
> 
> On 2023-09-26 10:43 a.m., Liang, Kan wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 2023-09-25 2:17 a.m., weilin.wang@intel.com wrote:
> >> From: Weilin Wang <weilin.wang@intel.com>
> >>
> >> Perf stat metric grouping generates event groups that are provided to
> >> kernel for data collection using the hardware counters. Sometimes,
> >> the grouping might fail and kernel has to retry the groups because
> >> generated groups do not fit in the hardware counters correctly. In
> >> some other cases, the groupings are collected correctly, however, they left
> some hardware counters unused.
> >>
> >> To improve these inefficiencies, we would like to propose a hardware
> >> aware grouping method that does metric/event grouping based on event
> >> counter>> restriction rules and the availability of hardware counters
> >> in the
> system. This
> >> method is generic as long as all the restriction rules could be
> >> provided from the pmu-event JSON files.
> >
> > This method assumes that it's the only user (expect NMI watchdog) and
> > all the HW resource are available. Right?
> 
> It's better to give more details about the algorithm of the method. How to
> decide to create a new group? How to decide which group the event will be
> added into. etc.
> 
> Thanks,
> Kan
> >
> >>
> >> This patch set includes code that does hardware aware grouping and
> >> updated pmu-event JSON files for four platforms (SapphireRapids,
> >> Icelakex, Cascadelakex, and Tigerlake) for your testing and
> >> experimenting. We've successfully tested these patches on three
> >> platforms (SapphireRapids, Icelakex, and Cascadelakex) with topdown
> metrics from TopdownL1 to TopdownL6.
> >>
> >> There are some optimization opportunities that we might implement in the
> future:
> >> 1) Better NMI hanlding: when NMI watchdog is enabled, we reduce the
> >> default_core total counter size by one. This could be improved to better
> utilize the counter.
> >> 2) Fill important events into unused counter for better counter utlization:
> >> there might be some unused counters scattered in the groups. We could
> >> consider to add important events in this slots if necessary. This
> >> could help increase the multiplexing percentage and help improve accuracy
> if the event is critical.
> >>
> >> Remaining questions for dicussion:
> >> 3) Where to start grouping from? The current implementation start
> >> grouping by combining all the events into a single list. This step
> >> deduplicates events. But it does not maintain the relationship of events
> according to the metrics, i.e.
> >> events required by one metric may not be collected at the same time.
> >> Another type of starting point would be grouping each individual
> >> metric and then try to merge the groups.
> >
> > Maybe you can add a new flag to tag the metric which should/better be
> > scheduled together, e.g., IPC.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Kan
> >> 4) Any comments, suggestions, new ideas?
> >> 5) If you are interested to test the patch out and the pmu-event JSON
> >> files of your testing platform is not provided here, please let me
> >> know so that I could provide you the files.
> >>
> >>
> >> Weilin Wang (25):
> >>   perf stat: Add hardware-grouping cmd option to perf stat
> >>   perf stat: Add basic functions for the hardware-grouping stat cmd
> >>     option
> >>   perf pmu-events: Add functions in jevent.py
> >>   perf pmu-events: Add counter info into JSON files for SapphireRapids
> >>   perf pmu-events: Add event counter data for Cascadelakex
> >>   perf pmu-events: Add event counter data for Icelakex
> >>   perf stat: Add helper functions for hardware-grouping method
> >>   perf stat: Add functions to get counter info
> >>   perf stat: Add helper functions for hardware-grouping method
> >>   perf stat: Add helper functions to hardware-grouping method
> >>   perf stat: Add utility functions to hardware-grouping method
> >>   perf stat: Add more functions for hardware-grouping method
> >>   perf stat: Add functions to hardware-grouping method
> >>   perf stat: Add build string function and topdown events handling in
> >>     hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Add function to combine metrics for hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Update keyword core to default_core to adjust to the
> >>     changes for events with no unit
> >>   perf stat: Handle taken alone in hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Handle NMI in hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Handle grouping method fall back in hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Code refactoring in hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Add tool events support in hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Add TSC support in hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Fix a return error issue in hardware-grouping
> >>   perf stat: Add check to ensure correctness in platform that does not
> >>     support hardware-grouping
> >>   perf pmu-events: Add event counter data for Tigerlake
> >>
> >>  tools/lib/bitmap.c                            |   20 +
> >>  tools/perf/builtin-stat.c                     |    7 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/cache.json          | 1237 ++++++++++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/counter.json        |   17 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/floating-point.json |   16 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/frontend.json       |   68 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/memory.json         |  751 ++++++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/other.json          |  168 ++
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/pipeline.json       |  102 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/uncore-cache.json   | 1138 +++++++++++
> >>  .../x86/cascadelakex/uncore-interconnect.json | 1272 +++++++++++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/uncore-io.json      |  394 ++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/uncore-memory.json  |  509 +++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/uncore-power.json   |   25 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/cascadelakex/virtual-memory.json |   28 +
> >>  .../pmu-events/arch/x86/icelakex/cache.json   |   98 +
> >>  .../pmu-events/arch/x86/icelakex/counter.json |   17 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/icelakex/floating-point.json     |   13 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/icelakex/frontend.json           |   55 +
> >>  .../pmu-events/arch/x86/icelakex/memory.json  |   53 +
> >>  .../pmu-events/arch/x86/icelakex/other.json   |   52 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/icelakex/pipeline.json           |   92 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/icelakex/uncore-cache.json       |  965 ++++++++++
> >>  .../x86/icelakex/uncore-interconnect.json     | 1667 +++++++++++++++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/icelakex/uncore-io.json          |  966 ++++++++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/icelakex/uncore-memory.json      |  186 ++
> >>  .../arch/x86/icelakex/uncore-power.json       |   26 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/icelakex/virtual-memory.json     |   22 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/cache.json        |  104 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/counter.json      |   17 +
> >>  .../x86/sapphirerapids/floating-point.json    |   25 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/frontend.json     |   98 +-
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/memory.json       |   44 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/other.json        |   40 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/pipeline.json     |  118 ++
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/uncore-cache.json |  534 +++++-
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/uncore-cxl.json   |   56 +
> >>  .../sapphirerapids/uncore-interconnect.json   |  476 +++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/uncore-io.json    |  373 ++++
> >>  .../x86/sapphirerapids/uncore-memory.json     |  391 ++++
> >>  .../arch/x86/sapphirerapids/uncore-power.json |   24 +
> >>  .../x86/sapphirerapids/virtual-memory.json    |   20 +
> >>  .../pmu-events/arch/x86/tigerlake/cache.json  |   65 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/tigerlake/counter.json           |    7 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/tigerlake/floating-point.json    |   13 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/tigerlake/frontend.json          |   56 +
> >>  .../pmu-events/arch/x86/tigerlake/memory.json |   31 +
> >>  .../pmu-events/arch/x86/tigerlake/other.json  |    4 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/tigerlake/pipeline.json          |   96 +
> >>  .../x86/tigerlake/uncore-interconnect.json    |   11 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/tigerlake/uncore-memory.json     |    6 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/tigerlake/uncore-other.json      |    1 +
> >>  .../arch/x86/tigerlake/virtual-memory.json    |   20 +
> >>  tools/perf/pmu-events/jevents.py              |  179 +-
> >>  tools/perf/pmu-events/pmu-events.h            |   26 +-
> >>  tools/perf/util/metricgroup.c                 |  927 +++++++++
> >>  tools/perf/util/metricgroup.h                 |   82 +
> >>  tools/perf/util/pmu.c                         |    5 +
> >>  tools/perf/util/pmu.h                         |    1 +
> >>  tools/perf/util/stat.h                        |    1 +
> >>  60 files changed, 13790 insertions(+), 25 deletions(-)  create mode
> >> 100644 tools/perf/pmu-events/arch/x86/cascadelakex/counter.json
> >>  create mode 100644
> >> tools/perf/pmu-events/arch/x86/icelakex/counter.json
> >>  create mode 100644
> >> tools/perf/pmu-events/arch/x86/sapphirerapids/counter.json
> >>  create mode 100644
> >> tools/perf/pmu-events/arch/x86/tigerlake/counter.json
> >>
> >> --
> >> 2.39.3
> >>