Re: [RFC PATCH V2 2/9] perf: Extend ABI to support post-processing monotonic raw conversion

["Liang, Kan" <kan.liang@linux.intel.com>]

On 2023-03-08 8:17 p.m., John Stultz wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 8, 2023 at 10:44 AM Liang, Kan <kan.liang@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>> On 2023-02-17 6:11 p.m., John Stultz wrote:
>>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 12:38 PM Liang, Kan <kan.liang@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>>>> On 2023-02-14 3:11 p.m., John Stultz wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 9:00 AM Liang, Kan <kan.liang@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On 2023-02-14 9:51 a.m., Liang, Kan wrote:
>>>>>>> If I understand correctly, the idea is to let the user space tool run
>>>>>>> the above interpoloation algorithm several times to 'guess' the atomic
>>>>>>> mapping. Using the mapping information to covert the TSC from the PEBS
>>>>>>> record. Is my understanding correct?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If so, to be honest, I doubt we can get the accuracy we want.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I implemented a simple test to evaluate the error.
>>>>>
>>>>> Very cool!
>>>>>
>>>>>> I collected TSC -> CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW mapping using the above algorithm
>>>>>> at the start and end of perf cmd.
>>>>>>         MONO_RAW        TSC
>>>>>> start   89553516545645  223619715214239
>>>>>> end     89562251233830  223641517000376
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here is what I get via mult/shift conversion from this patch.
>>>>>>         MONO_RAW        TSC
>>>>>> PEBS    89555942691466  223625770878571
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then I use the time information from start and end to create a linear
>>>>>> function and 'guess' the MONO_RAW of PEBS from the TSC. I get
>>>>>> 89555942692721.
>>>>>> There is a 1255 ns difference.
>>>>>> I tried several different PEBS records. The error is ~1000ns.
>>>>>> I think it should be an observable error.
>>>>>
>>>>> Interesting. That's a good bit higher than I'd expect as I'd expect a
>>>>> clock_gettime() call to take ~ double digit nanoseconds range on
>>>>> average, so the error should be within that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Can you share your logic?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I run the algorithm right before and after the perf command as below.
>>>> (The source code of time is attached.)
>>>>
>>>> $./time
>>>> $perf record -e cycles:upp --clockid monotonic_raw $some_workaround
>>>> $./time
>>>>
>>>> The time will dump both MONO_RAW and TSC. That's where "start" and "end"
>>>> from.
>>>> The perf command print out both TSC and converted MONO_RAW (using the
>>>> mul/shift from this patch series). That's where "PEBS" value from.
>>>>
>>>> Than I use the below formula to calculate the guessed MONO_RAW of PEBS TSC.
>>>> Guessed_MONO_RAW = (PEBS_TSC - start_TSC) / (end_TSC - start_TSC) *
>>>> (end_MONO_RAW - start_MONO_RAW) + start_MONO_RAW.
>>>>
>>>> The guessed_MONO_RAW is 89555942692721.
>>>> The PEBS_MONO_RAW is 89555942691466.
>>>> The difference is 1255.
>>>>
>>>> Is the calculation correct?
>>>
>>> Thanks for sharing it. The equation you have there looks ok at a high
>>> level for the values you captured (there's small tweaks like doing the
>>> mult before the div to make sure you don't hit integer precision
>>> issues, but I didn't see that with your results).
>>>
>>> I've got a todo to try to see how the calculation changes if we do
>>> provide atomic TSC/RAW stamps, here but I got a little busy with other
>>> work and haven't gotten to it.
>>> So my apologies, but I'll try to get back to this soon.
>>>
>>
>> Have you got a chance to try the idea?
>>
>> I just want to check whether the userspace interpolation approach works.
>> Should I prepare V3 and go back to the kernel solution?
> 
> Oh, my apologies. I had some other work come up and this fell off my plate.
> 
> So I spent a little bit of time today adding some trace_printks to the
> timekeeping code so I could record the actual TSC and timestamps being
> calculated from CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW.
> 
> I did catch one error in the test code, which unfortunately I'm to blame for:
>   mid = start + (delta +(delta/2))/2; //round-closest
> 
> That should be
>   mid = start + (delta +(2/2))/2  //round-closest
> or more simply
>   mid = start + (delta +1)/2; //round-closest
> 
> Generalized rounding should be: (value + (DIV/2))/DIV), but I'm
> guessing with two as the divisor, my brain mixed it up and typed
> "delta". My apologies!
> 
> With that fix, I'm seeing closer to ~500ns of error in the
> interpolation, just using the userland sampling.   Now, I've also
> disabled vsyscalls for this (otherwise I wouldn't be able to
> trace_printk), so the error likely would be higher than with
> vsyscalls.
> 
> Now, part of the error is that:
>   start= rdtsc();
>   clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW, &ts);
>   end = rdtsc();
> 
> Ends up looking like
>   start= rdtsc();
>   clock_gettime() {
>      now = rdtsc();
>      delta = now - last;
>      ns = (delta * mult) >> shift
> [~midpoint~]
>      ts->nsec = base_ns + ns;
>      ts->sec = base_sec;
>      normalize_ts(ts)
>   }
>   end = rdtsc();
> 
> And so by taking the mid-point we're always a little skewed from where
> the tsc was actually read.  Looking at the data for my case the tsc
> read seems to be ~12% in, so you could instead try:
> 
> delta = end - start;
> p12 = start + ((delta * 12) + (100/2))/100;
> 
> With that adjustment, I'm seeing error around ~40ns.
> 
> Mind giving that a try?

I tried both the new mid and p12. The error becomes even larger.

With new mid (start + (delta +1)/2), the error is now ~3800ns
With p12 adjustment, the error is ~6700ns.


Here is how I run the test.
$./time
$perf record -e cycles:upp --clockid monotonic_raw $some_workaround
$./time

Here are some raw data.

For the first ./time,
start: 961886196018
end: 961886215603
MONO_RAW: 341485848531

For the second ./time,
start: 986870117783
end: 986870136152
MONO_RAW: 351495432044

Here is the time generated from one PEBS record.
TSC: 968210217271
PEBS_MONO_RAW (calculated via kernel conversion information): 344019503072

Using new mid (start + (delta +1)/2), the guessed PEBS_MONO_RAW is
344019506897. The error is 3825ns.
Using p12 adjustment, the guessed PEBS_MONO_RAW is 344019509831.
The error is 6759ns

Thanks,
Kan
> 
> Now, if you had two snapshots of MONOTONIC_RAW + the TSC value used to
> calculate it(maybe the driver access this via a special internal
> timekeeping interface), in my testing interpolating will give you
> sub-ns error. So I think this is workable without exposing quite so
> much to userland.
> 
> thanks
> -john