Re: [PATCH v4 1/3] perf: Use monotonic clock as a source for timestamps

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Thu, Nov 06, 2014 at 04:51:56PM +0000, Pawel Moll wrote:
>  Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt |  9 +++++++++
>  kernel/events/core.c                | 37 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  2 files changed, 46 insertions(+)

> diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
> index 4c81a86..8ead8d8 100644
> --- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt

> @@ -2763,6 +2764,14 @@ bytes respectively. Such letter suffixes can also be entirely omitted.
>  			allocator.  This parameter is primarily	for debugging
>  			and performance comparison.
>  
> +	perf_use_local_clock
> +			[PERF]
> +			Use local_clock() as a source for perf timestamps
> +			generation. This was be the default behaviour and
> +			this parameter can be used to maintain backward
> +			compatibility or on older hardware with expensive
> +			monotonic clock source.
> +
>  	pf.		[PARIDE]
>  			See Documentation/blockdev/paride.txt.

So I'm always terminally confused on the naming of kernel parameters,
sometimes things are modules (even when they're not actually =m capable)
and get a module::foo naming or so and sometimes they're not.

So we want to use the module naming thing or not?

> diff --git a/kernel/events/core.c b/kernel/events/core.c
> index 2b02c9f..5d0aa03 100644
> --- a/kernel/events/core.c
> +++ b/kernel/events/core.c

> @@ -322,8 +323,41 @@ extern __weak const char *perf_pmu_name(void)
>  	return "pmu";
>  }
>  
> +static bool perf_use_local_clock;
> +static int __init perf_use_local_clock_setup(char *__unused)
> +{
> +	perf_use_local_clock = true;
> +	return 1;
> +}
> +__setup("perf_use_local_clock", perf_use_local_clock_setup);

>  static inline u64 perf_clock(void)
>  {
> +	if (likely(!perf_use_local_clock))
> +		return ktime_get_mono_fast_ns();
> +
>  	return local_clock();
>  }

Since this all is boot time, should we not use things like static_key
and avoid the 'pointless' conditional at runtime?