tree 85392e8c2878290b7f9ffdd644b5a02d5bd4bf78
parent 4dae560f97fa438f373b53e14b30149c9e44a600
author Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com> 1257977647 -0500
committer Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> 1257996135 -0500

ring-buffer: Add multiple iterations between benchmark timestamps

The ring_buffer_benchmark does a gettimeofday after every write to the
ring buffer in its measurements. This adds the overhead of the call
to gettimeofday to the measurements and does not give an accurate picture
of the length of time it takes to record a trace.

This was first noticed with perf top:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   PerfTop:     679 irqs/sec  kernel:99.9% [1000Hz cpu-clock-msecs],  (all, 4 CPUs)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

             samples    pcnt   kernel function
             _______   _____   _______________

             1673.00 - 27.8% : trace_clock_local
              806.00 - 13.4% : do_gettimeofday
              590.00 -  9.8% : rb_reserve_next_event
              554.00 -  9.2% : native_read_tsc
              431.00 -  7.2% : ring_buffer_lock_reserve
              365.00 -  6.1% : __rb_reserve_next
              355.00 -  5.9% : rb_end_commit
              322.00 -  5.4% : getnstimeofday
              268.00 -  4.5% : ring_buffer_unlock_commit
              262.00 -  4.4% : ring_buffer_producer_thread 	[ring_buffer_benchmark]
              113.00 -  1.9% : read_tsc
               91.00 -  1.5% : debug_smp_processor_id
               69.00 -  1.1% : trace_recursive_unlock
               66.00 -  1.1% : ring_buffer_event_data
               25.00 -  0.4% : _spin_unlock_irq

And the length of each write to the ring buffer measured at 310ns.

This patch adds a new module parameter called "write_interval" which is
defaulted to 50. This is the number of writes performed between
timestamps. After this patch perf top shows:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   PerfTop:     244 irqs/sec  kernel:100.0% [1000Hz cpu-clock-msecs],  (all, 4 CPUs)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

             samples    pcnt   kernel function
             _______   _____   _______________

             2842.00 - 40.4% : trace_clock_local
             1043.00 - 14.8% : rb_reserve_next_event
              784.00 - 11.1% : ring_buffer_lock_reserve
              600.00 -  8.5% : __rb_reserve_next
              579.00 -  8.2% : rb_end_commit
              440.00 -  6.3% : ring_buffer_unlock_commit
              290.00 -  4.1% : ring_buffer_producer_thread 	[ring_buffer_benchmark]
              155.00 -  2.2% : debug_smp_processor_id
              117.00 -  1.7% : trace_recursive_unlock
              103.00 -  1.5% : ring_buffer_event_data
               28.00 -  0.4% : do_gettimeofday
               22.00 -  0.3% : _spin_unlock_irq
               14.00 -  0.2% : native_read_tsc
               11.00 -  0.2% : getnstimeofday

do_gettimeofday dropped from 13% usage to a mere 0.4%! (using the default
50 interval)  The measurement for each timestamp went from 310ns to 210ns.
That's 100ns (1/3rd) overhead that the gettimeofday call was introducing.

Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>