Thread (44 messages) 44 messages, 9 authors, 2009-05-04

Re: [BUG] perf_counter: change cpu frequencies

From: Ingo Molnar <hidden>
Date: 2009-05-03 07:26:39
Also in: lkml

* Eric Dumazet [off-list ref] wrote:
Eric Dumazet a écrit :
quoted
Eric Dumazet a écrit :
 
quoted
But if I use plain "perf stat -a sleep 10"
it seems I get wrong values again (16 G cycles/sec) for all next perf sessions
Well, I confirm all my cpus switched from 3GHz to 2GHz, after

"perf stat -a sleep 10"

(but "perf stat -e instructions -e cycles -a sleep 10" doesnt trigger this problem)

Nothing logged, and /proc/cpuinfo stills reports 3 GHz frequencies

# cat unit.c
main() {
  int i;
  for (i = 0 ; i < 10000000; i++)
        getppid();
}
# time ./unit

real    0m0.818s
user    0m0.289s
sys     0m0.529s
# perf stat -a sleep 10 2>/dev/null
# time ./unit

real    0m1.122s
user    0m0.482s
sys     0m0.640s

# tail -n 27 /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 7
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 23
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5450  @ 3.00GHz
stepping        : 6
cpu MHz         : 3000.102
cache size      : 6144 KB
physical id     : 1
siblings        : 1
core id         : 3
cpu cores       : 4
apicid          : 7
initial apicid  : 7
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 10
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips        : 6000.01
clflush size    : 64
power management:

# grep CPU_FREQ .config
# CONFIG_CPU_FREQ is not set


perf_counter seems promising, but still... needs some bug hunting :)
Update :

Mike Galbraith suggested me to try various things, and finally, I discovered
this frequency change was probably a BIOS problem on my HP BL460c G1

System Options -> Power regulator for Proliant

[*] HP Dynamic Power Savings Mode
[ ] HP Static Low Power Mode
[ ] HP Static High Performance Mode
[ ] OS Control Mode


I switched it to 'OS Control Mode'

Then acpi-cpufreq could load, and no more frequencies changes on a "perf -a sleep 10" 
session, using or not cpufreq.
(Supported cpufreq speeds on these cpus : 1999 & 2999 MHz)

So it was a BIOS issue
ah! That makes quite a bit of sense. The BIOS interfering with an OS 
feature ... Was that the default setting in the BIOS?
# perf stat -a sleep 10

 Performance counter stats for 'sleep':

   80005.418223  task clock ticks     (msecs)
          80266  context switches     (events)
              3  CPU migrations       (events)
            486  pagefaults           (events)
   240013851624  CPU cycles           (events) << good >>
   239076501419  instructions         (events)
         679464  cache references     (events)
  <not counted>  cache misses

 Wall-clock time elapsed: 10000.468808 msecs
That looks perfect now.

It would also be really nice to have a sysrq-p dump of your PMU 
state before you've done any profiling. Is there any trace of the 
BIOS meddling with them, that we could detect (and warn about) 
during bootup?

Thanks,

	Ingo
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