From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 15140 invoked by alias); 5 Jun 2007 16:04:19 -0000 Received: (qmail 15133 invoked by uid 22791); 5 Jun 2007 16:04:18 -0000 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-0.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_50,DK_POLICY_SIGNSOME,DNS_FROM_RFC_ABUSE,SPF_PASS X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from e32.co.us.ibm.com (HELO e32.co.us.ibm.com) (32.97.110.150) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:04:13 +0000 Received: from d03relay04.boulder.ibm.com (d03relay04.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.106]) by e32.co.us.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l55FxqtB005214 for ; Tue, 5 Jun 2007 11:59:52 -0400 Received: from d03av03.boulder.ibm.com (d03av03.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.169]) by d03relay04.boulder.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.13.8/NCO v8.3) with ESMTP id l55FuCkJ210500 for ; Tue, 5 Jun 2007 10:04:08 -0600 Received: from d03av03.boulder.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d03av03.boulder.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.13.3) with ESMTP id l55FkCIV022049 for ; Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:46:13 -0600 Received: from [127.0.0.1] (wecm-9-67-143-241.wecm.ibm.com [9.67.143.241]) by d03av03.boulder.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id l55Fk8jC020070; Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:46:12 -0600 Message-ID: <46658585.6080301@us.ibm.com> Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:04:00 -0000 From: Dave Nomura Reply-To: dcnltc@us.ibm.com Organization: LTC Power Linux Toolchain User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (Windows/20070509) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: systemtap@sourceware.org CC: James Keniston Subject: SystemTap Instruction Tracing Proposal Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mailing-List: contact systemtap-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: systemtap-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2007-q2/txt/msg00476.txt.bz2 The data produced by an instruction tracing tool is used by other performance analysis tools to detect pipeline performance problems and for tuning highly optimized code. We feel that having instruction tracing integrated with SystemTap would make it more widely available in various Linux distributions. Requirements o support both single step and branch tracing modes o single step traces would also collect load/store trace data o ability to trace user code including system calls into kernel space o support for tracing single and mulitiple processes o ability for user to turn on/off tracing for specific pid or group of pids o pluggable post processing component to allow formatting of trace data for a variety of performance analysis tools We have been developing a somewhat brute-force SystemTap script based on the Performace Inspector ITRACE tool to familiarize ourselves with SystemTap and to explore some of the issues/problems that may need further SystemTap support. We are making this proposal as a result of this prototyping work and the discussions we've had with some members of the SystemTap community. Is there sufficient interest in the SystemTap community in having an instruction tracing capability as described above to warrant futher discussion and investigation? -- Dave Nomura LTC Linux Power Toolchain