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irix-657m-src/irix/man/man1/ecadmin.1
2022-09-29 17:59:04 +03:00

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'\"macro stdmacro
.TH ECADMIN 1
.SH NAME
\f3ecadmin\f1 \- configure and control the global event counters
.SH SYNOPSIS
\f3ecadmin\f1
[\f3\-aDlMrT\f1]
[\f3\-d\f1 event[,event...]]
[\f3\-e\f1 event[,event...]]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B ecadmin
may be used on systems with MIPS R10000 or R12000 processors to configure the
global event counters maintained by IRIX using the underlying
hardware event counter mechanisms.
The global event counters are maintained on a system-wide basis,
aggregated over all processes and for all user and system mode
execution.
.PP
The
.I event
arguments identify hardware-specific event counters.
These may be either integers or mnemonic, case-insensitive names.
In conjunction with the
.B \-e
option, a single
.I event
specification of
.B ?
(with appropriate shell escape) will cause
.B ecadmin
to list all known event counters, and then exit.
.PP
The normal usage would be to enable global event counters with
.B ecadmin
and then to monitor the event counters with
.BR ecstats (1)
or the Performance Co-Pilot tools.
.PP
The options to
.I ecadmin
are as follows;
.PP
.TP 5
\f3\-a\f1
Enable \f3all\f1 event counters; this is an abbreviation for
using
.B \-e
with all of the possible
.I event
counters enumerated, or
.B \-e
.BR *
(with appropriate shell escape).
.TP 5
\f3\-D\f1
Turn on diagnostic output associated with the control operations.
.TP 5
\f3\-d\f1
Disable event counting for the nominated
.I event
counters.
.TP 5
\f3\-e\f1
Enable event counting for the nominated
.I event
counters.
.TP 5
\f3\-l\f1
List all event counters for which counting is currently enabled.
.TP 5
.B \-M
By default, event counting is not currently supported for systems
with a mixture or R10000 and R12000 processors. The
.B \-M
flag relaxes this restriction and allows control for the subset
of the event counters that have the same interpretation across
all processor types. This option but should only be used in controlled
execution environments where the integrity of the event counter values aggregated
across processor types can be guaranteed. Great care should be
be exercised when interpreting the counter values under these
circumstances.
.TP 5
\f3\-r\f1
Disable (and release the allocation for) all global event counters.
.TP 5
.B \-T
The
.B \-T
(or ``trust me'') flag disables the semantic checks for
combinations of event counters are normally not allowed on
systems with mixtures of processors of different
type and/or revision. Extreme care should be used with the
.B \-T
flag, as the reported event counter values maybe meaningless unless the
execution environment is very tightly controlled.
To have the desired effect,
.B \-T
may require the concurrent specification of the
.B \-M
flag.
.PP
If the operation is completed without errors,
.B ecadmin
has an exit status of zero.
.SH CAVEATS
The underlying hardware event counters are a finite resource, to be
shared amongst
multiple competing uses.
.PP
If there is any concurrent use of the process-based
event counters via either
.BR perfex (1)
or the counter-based SpeedShop profiling tools, then attempts
to manipulate the global event counters via
.B ecadmin
will not succeed.
Processes using the process-based event counters can be identified
with
.BR ecfind (1).
.PP
If global event counting is enabled via
.B ecadmin
then this will augment any concurrent use resulting from an
earlier use of
.BR ecadmin .
.PP
Once
.B any
global event counters have been enabled with
.BR ecadmin ,
then any future attempts to use either
.BR perfex (1)
or the counter-based SpeedShop profiling tools will
be unsuccessful, until
.B all
global event counters are released, either with
.B \-r
or by disabling all active counters via
.BR \-d .
.PP
For this reason, the user of
.B ecadmin
must be
.B root
to use any option other than
.B \-l
or
.BR "\-e ?".
.PP
Depending on the revision of the MIPS R10000 CPUs there is a
difference in the interpretation of event counter 14
(``Virtual coherency condition'' for parts before revision 3.1
or ``ALU/FPU completion cycles'' for parts at revision 3.1 or
later). There are also some subtle differences in the semantics
of some of the event counters.
In systems with a homogeneous deployment of R10000 CPUs at the same
revision,
.B ecadmin
will adjust the description of event counter 14 accordingly.
.PP
For systems with a mixed deployment of R10000 CPU revisions including
some before 3.1 and some at or after 3.1, the interpretation of
event counter 14 is undefined, and there may be some slight inaccuracies
due to aggregation of counters with different semantics across
all CPUs. For this reason counter 14 may not be enabled on systems
with mixed R10000 reployments unless the
.B \-T
flag is specified.
.PP
Identification of the types and revisions for all CPUs can be made using
the
.B \-v
flag to
.BR hinv (1),
or the
.B \-D
flag to
.BR ecadmin .
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR ecfind (1),
.BR ecstats (1),
.BR perfex (1),
.BR pminfo (1),
.BR speedshop (1)
and
.BR r10k_counters (5).
.PP
The specifications for the MIPS R10000 event counters may be found at
http://www.sgi.com/processors/r10k/performance.html