Hardware Performance Counter Issues
Most modern processors have performance counters that allow
for performance analysis, among other uses.
Unfortunately available counters differ greatly, even among
imlpementations of the same architecture. In addition, correctness
of the counters is a low priority for chip designers, so there
are often subtle issues with the counts.
This is an attempt to summarize various issues I've found when
using hardware performance counters under Linux.
Counters by PMU Implementation
- Alpha
- ARM
- Power
- SPARC
- x86
- AMD (32 and 64-bit)
- Intel P6-class (Pentium Pro, II, III, M)
- Intel Netburst (Pentium 4)
- Intel Core
- Intel Nehalem
- Intel Westmere
Frequently Used Counters
Counters by PAPI Usage
I presented a paper at FHPM-2010 that describes how
I experimentally find these issues.
See this page for more information.
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