Re: [PATCH v5] pgo: add clang's Profile Guided Optimization infrastructure

On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 1:44 AM Bill Wendling [off-list ref] wrote:

From: Sami Tolvanen <samitolvanen@google.com>

Enable the use of clang's Profile-Guided Optimization[1]. To generate a
profile, the kernel is instrumented with PGO counters, a representative
workload is run, and the raw profile data is collected from
/sys/kernel/debug/pgo/profraw.

The raw profile data must be processed by clang's "llvm-profdata" tool
before it can be used during recompilation:

  $ cp /sys/kernel/debug/pgo/profraw vmlinux.profraw
  $ llvm-profdata merge --output=vmlinux.profdata vmlinux.profraw

Multiple raw profiles may be merged during this step.

The data can now be used by the compiler:

  $ make LLVM=1 KCFLAGS=-fprofile-use=vmlinux.profdata ...

This initial submission is restricted to x86, as that's the platform we
know works. This restriction can be lifted once other platforms have
been verified to work with PGO.

Note that this method of profiling the kernel is clang-native, unlike
the clang support in kernel/gcov.

[1] https://clang.llvm.org/docs/UsersManual.html#profile-guided-optimization

Signed-off-by: Sami Tolvanen <samitolvanen@google.com>
Co-developed-by: Bill Wendling <morbo@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Bill Wendling <morbo@google.com>
---
v2: - Added "__llvm_profile_instrument_memop" based on Nathan Chancellor's
      testing.
    - Corrected documentation, re PGO flags when using LTO, based on Fangrui
      Song's comments.
v3: - Added change log section based on Sedat Dilek's comments.
v4: - Remove non-x86 Makfile changes and se "hweight64" instead of using our
      own popcount implementation, based on Nick Desaulniers's comment.
v5: - Correct padding calculation, discovered by Nathan Chancellor.

Specifically for v5:
Tested-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>

If anything changes drastically, please drop that and I'll retest it;
otherwise for changes to the commit message or docs, feel free to
carry it forward.

I'll try to provide code review by EOW, assuming we can stop
regressing LLVM so I can focus. (Ha!)
-- 
Thanks,
~Nick Desaulniers