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PMC(3)			 BSD Library Functions Manual			PMC(3)

NAME
     pmc — library for accessing hardware performance monitoring counters

LIBRARY
     Performance Counters Library (libpmc, -lpmc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <pmc.h>

DESCRIPTION
     The Performance Counters Library (libpmc, -lpmc) provides a programming
     interface that allows applications to use hardware performance counters
     to gather performance data about specific processes or for the system as
     a whole.  The library is implemented using the lower-level facilities
     offered by the hwpmc(4) driver.

   Key Concepts
     Performance monitoring counters (PMCs) are represented by the library
     using a software abstraction.  These “abstract” PMCs can have one two
     scopes:

     ·	 System scope.	These PMCs measure events in a whole-system manner,
	 i.e., independent of the currently executing thread.  System scope
	 PMCs are allocated on specific CPUs and do not migrate between CPUs.
	 Non-privileged process are allowed to allocate system scope PMCs if
	 the hwpmc(4) sysctl tunable: security.bsd.unprivileged_syspmcs is
	 non-zero.

     ·	 Process scope.	 These PMCs only measure hardware events when the pro‐
	 cesses they are attached to are executing on a CPU.  In an SMP sys‐
	 tem, process scope PMCs migrate between CPUs along with their target
	 processes.

     Orthogonal to PMC scope, PMCs may be allocated in one of two operational
     modes:

     ·	 Counting PMCs measure events according to their scope (system or
	 process).  The application needs to explicitly read these counters to
	 retrieve their value.

     ·	 Sampling PMCs cause the CPU to be periodically interrupted and infor‐
	 mation about its state of execution to be collected.  Sampling PMCs
	 are used to profile specific processes and kernel threads or to pro‐
	 file the system as a whole.

     The scope and operational mode for a software PMC are specified at PMC
     allocation time.  An application is allowed to allocate multiple PMCs
     subject to availability of hardware resources.

     The library uses human-readable strings to name the event being measured
     by hardware.  The syntax used for specifying a hardware event along with
     additional event specific qualifiers (if any) is described in detail in
     section EVENT SPECIFIERS below.

     PMCs are associated with the process that allocated them and will be
     automatically reclaimed by the system when the process exits.  Addition‐
     ally, process-scope PMCs have to be attached to one or more target pro‐
     cesses before they can perform measurements.  A process-scope PMC may be
     attached to those target processes that its owner process would otherwise
     be permitted to debug.  An owner process may attach PMCs to itself allow‐
     ing it to measure its own behavior.  Additionally, on some machine archi‐
     tectures, such self-attached PMCs may be read cheaply using specialized
     instructions supported by the processor.

     Certain kinds of PMCs require that a log file be configured before they
     may be started.  These include:
     ·	 System scope sampling PMCs.
     ·	 Process scope sampling PMCs.
     ·	 Process scope counting PMCs that have been configured to report PMC
	 readings on process context switches or process exits.
     Upto one log file may be configured per owner process.  Events logged to
     a log file may be subsequently analyzed using the pmclog(3) family of
     functions.

   Supported CPUs
     The CPUs known to the PMC library are named by the enum pmc_cputype enu‐
     meration.	Supported CPUs include:
     PMC_CPU_AMD_K7	     AMD Athlon CPUs.
     PMC_CPU_AMD_K8	     AMD Athlon64 CPUs.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_ATOM	     Intel Atom CPUs and other CPUs conforming to ver‐
			     sion 3 of the Intel performance measurement
			     architecture.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_CORE	     Intel Core Solo and Core Duo CPUs, and other CPUs
			     conforming to version 1 of the Intel performance
			     measurement architecture.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_CORE2     Intel Core2 Solo, Core2 Duo and Core2 Extreme
			     CPUs, and other CPUs conforming to version 2 of
			     the Intel performance measurement architecture.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_P5	     Intel Pentium CPUs.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_P6	     Intel Pentium Pro CPUs.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_PII	     Intel Pentium II CPUs.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_PIII	     Intel Pentium III CPUs.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_PIV	     Intel Pentium 4 CPUs.
     PMC_CPU_INTEL_PM	     Intel Pentium M CPUs.

   Supported PMCs
     PMC supported by this library are named by the enum pmc_class enumera‐
     tion.  Supported PMC kinds include:
     PMC_CLASS_IAF     Fixed function hardwre counters presents in CPUs con‐
		       forming to the Intel performance measurement architec‐
		       ture version 2 and later.
     PMC_CLASS_IAP     Programmable hardware counters present in CPUs conform‐
		       ing to the Intel performance measurement architecture
		       version 1 and later.
     PMC_CLASS_K7      Programmable hardware counters present in AMD Athlon
		       CPUs.
     PMC_CLASS_K8      Programmable hardware counters present in AMD Athlon64
		       CPUs.
     PMC_CLASS_P4      Programmable hardware counters present in Intel Pentium
		       4 CPUs.
     PMC_CLASS_P5      Programmable hardware counters present in Intel Pentium
		       CPUs.
     PMC_CLASS_P6      Programmable hardware counters present in Intel Pentium
		       Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Celeron, and Pentium M
		       CPUs.
     PMC_CLASS_TSC     The timestamp counter on i386 and amd64 architecture
		       CPUs.

   PMC Capabilities
     Capabilities of performance monitoring hardware are denoted using the
     enum pmc_caps enumeration.	 Supported capabilities include:
     PMC_CAP_CASCADE	   The ability to cascade counters.
     PMC_CAP_EDGE	   The ability to count negated to asserted transi‐
			   tions of the hardware conditions being probed for.
     PMC_CAP_INTERRUPT	   The ability to interrupt the CPU.
     PMC_CAP_INVERT	   The ability to invert the sense of the hardware
			   conditions being measured.
     PMC_CAP_PRECISE	   The ability to perform precise sampling.
     PMC_CAP_QUALIFIER	   The hardware allows monitored to be further quali‐
			   fied in some system dependent way.
     PMC_CAP_READ	   The ability to read from performance counters.
     PMC_CAP_SYSTEM	   The ability to restrict counting of hardware events
			   to when the CPU is running privileged code.
     PMC_CAP_THRESHOLD	   The ability to ignore simultaneous hardware events
			   below a programmable threshold.
     PMC_CAP_USER	   The ability to restrict counting of hardware events
			   to those when the CPU is running unprivileged code.
     PMC_CAP_WRITE	   The ability to write to performance counters.

   CPU Naming Conventions
     CPUs are named using small integers from zero uptil, but excluding, the
     value returned by function pmc_ncpu().  On platforms supporting sparsely
     numbered CPUs not all the numbers in this range will denote valid CPUs.
     Operations on non-existent CPUs will return an error.

   Functional Grouping of the API
     This section contains a brief overview of the available functionality in
     the PMC library.  Each function listed here is described further in its
     own manual page.

     Administration
	     pmc_disable(), pmc_enable()
			       Administratively disable (enable) specific per‐
			       formance monitoring counter hardware.  Counters
			       that are disabled will not be available to
			       applications to use.

     Convenience Functions
	     pmc_event_names_of_class()
			       Returns a list of event names supported by a
			       given PMC type.
	     pmc_name_of_capability()
			       Convert a PMC_CAP_* flag to a human-readable
			       string.
	     pmc_name_of_class()
			       Convert a PMC_CLASS_* constant to a human-read‐
			       able string.
	     pmc_name_of_cputype()
			       Return a human-readable name for a CPU type.
	     pmc_name_of_disposition()
			       Return a human-readable string describing a
			       PMC's disposition.
	     pmc_name_of_event()
			       Convert a numeric event code to a human-read‐
			       able string.
	     pmc_name_of_mode()
			       Convert a PMC_MODE_* constant to a human-read‐
			       able name.
	     pmc_name_of_state()
			       Return a human-readable string describing a
			       PMC's current state.

     Library Initialization
	     pmc_init()	       Initialize the library.	This function must be
			       called before any other library function.

     Log File Handling
	     pmc_configure_logfile()
			       Configure a log file for hwpmc(4) to write
			       logged events to.
	     pmc_flush_logfile()
			       Flush all pending log data in hwpmc(4)'s buf‐
			       fers.
	     pmc_writelog()    Append arbitrary user data to the current log
			       file.

     PMC Management
	     pmc_allocate(), pmc_release()
			       Allocate (free) a PMC.
	     pmc_attach(), pmc_detach()
			       Attach (detach) a process scope PMC to a tar‐
			       get.
	     pmc_read(), pmc_write(), pmc_rw()
			       Read (write) a value from (to) a PMC.
	     pmc_start(), pmc_stop()
			       Start (stop) a software PMC.
	     pmc_set()	       Set the reload value for a sampling PMC.

     Queries
	     pmc_capabilities()
			       Retrieve the capabilities for a given PMC.
	     pmc_cpuinfo()     Retrieve information about the CPUs and PMC
			       hardware present in the system.
	     pmc_get_driver_stats()
			       Retrieve statistics maintained by hwpmc(4).
	     pmc_ncpu()	       Determine the greatest possible CPU number on
			       the system.
	     pmc_npmc()	       Return the number of hardware PMCs present in a
			       given CPU.
	     pmc_pmcinfo()     Return information about the state of a given
			       CPU's PMCs.
	     pmc_width()       Determine the width of a hardware counter in
			       bits.

     x86 Architecture Specific API
	     pmc_get_msr()     Returns the processor model specific register
			       number associated with pmc.  Applications may
			       then use the x86 RDPMC instruction to directly
			       read the contents of the PMC.

   Signal Handling Requirements
     Applications using PMCs are required to handle the following signals:

     SIGBUS  When the hwpmc(4) module is unloaded using kldunload(8), pro‐
	     cesses that have PMCs allocated to them will be sent a SIGBUS
	     signal.

     SIGIO   The hwpmc(4) driver will send a PMC owning process a SIGIO signal
	     if:

	     ·	 If any process-mode PMC allocated by it loses all its target
		 processes.

	     ·	 If the driver encounters an error when writing log data to a
		 configured log file.  This error may be retrieved by a subse‐
		 quent call to pmc_flush_logfile().

   Typical Program Flow
     1.	  An application would first invoke function pmc_init() to allow the
	  library to initialize itself.

     2.	  Signal handling would then be set up.

     3.	  Next the application would allocate the PMCs it desires using func‐
	  tion pmc_allocate().

     4.	  Initial values for PMCs may be set using function pmc_set().

     5.	  If a log file is necessary for the PMCs to work, it would be config‐
	  ured using function pmc_configure_logfile().

     6.	  Process scope PMCs would then be attached to their target processes
	  using function pmc_attach().

     7.	  The PMCs would then be started using function pmc_start().

     8.	  Once started, the values of counting PMCs may be read using function
	  pmc_start().	For PMCs that write events to the log file, this
	  logged data would be read and parsed using the pmclog(3) family of
	  functions.

     9.	  PMCs are stopped using function pmc_stop(), and process scope PMCs
	  are detached from their targets using function pmc_detach().

     10.  Before the process exits, its may release its PMCs using function
	  pmc_release().  Any configured log file may be closed using function
	  pmc_configure_logfile().

EVENT SPECIFIERS
     Event specifiers are strings comprising of an event name, followed by
     optional parameters modifying the semantics of the hardware event being
     probed.  Event names are PMC architecture dependent, but the PMC library
     defines machine independent aliases for commonly used events.

     Event specifiers spellings are case-insensitive and space characters,
     periods, underscores and hyphens are considered equivalent to each other.
     Thus the event specifiers "Example Event", "example-event", and
     "EXAMPLE_EVENT" are equivalent.

   PMC Architecture Dependent Events
     PMC architecture dependent event specifiers are described in the follow‐
     ing manual pages:

     PMC Class		Manual Page
     PMC_CLASS_IAF	pmc.iaf(3)
     PMC_CLASS_IAP	pmc.atom(3), pmc.core(3), pmc.core2(3)
     PMC_CLASS_K7	pmc.k7(3)
     PMC_CLASS_K8	pmc.k8(3)
     PMC_CLASS_P4	pmc.p4(3)
     PMC_CLASS_P5	pmc.p5(3)
     PMC_CLASS_P6	pmc.p6(3)
     PMC_CLASS_TSC	pmc.tsc(3)

   Event Name Aliases
     Event name aliases are PMC-independent names for commonly used events.
     The following aliases are known to this version of the pmc library:

     branches
	     Measure the number of branches retired.

     branch-mispredicts
	     Measure the number of retired branches that were mispredicted.

     cycles  Measure processor cycles.	This event is implemented using the
	     processor's Time Stamp Counter register.

     dc-misses
	     Measure the number of data cache misses.

     ic-misses
	     Measure the number of instruction cache misses.

     instructions
	     Measure the number of instructions retired.

     interrupts
	     Measure the number of interrupts seen.

     unhalted-cycles
	     Measure the number of cycles the processor is not in a halted or
	     sleep state.

COMPATIBILITY
     The interface between the pmc library and the hwpmc(4) driver is intended
     to be private to the implementation and may change.  In order to ease
     forward compatibility with future versions of the hwpmc(4) driver, appli‐
     cations are urged to dynamically link with the pmc library.

     The pmc API is currently under development.

SEE ALSO
     pmc.atom(3), pmc.core(3), pmc.core2(3), pmc.iaf(3), pmc.k7(3), pmc.k8(3),
     pmc.p4(3), pmc.p5(3), pmc.p6(3), pmc.tsc(3), pmclog(3), hwpmc(4),
     pmccontrol(8), pmcstat(8)

HISTORY
     The pmc library first appeared in FreeBSD 6.0.

AUTHORS
     The Performance Counters Library (libpmc, -lpmc) library was written by
     Joseph Koshy ⟨jkoshy@FreeBSD.org⟩.

BSD			       November 24, 2008			   BSD
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