Documentation/trace/osnoise-tracer.rst

Source file repositories/reference/linux-study-clean/Documentation/trace/osnoise-tracer.rst

File Facts

System
Linux kernel
Corpus path
Documentation/trace/osnoise-tracer.rst
Extension
.rst
Size
9787 bytes
Lines
181
Domain
Support Tooling And Documentation
Bucket
Documentation
Inferred role
Support Tooling And Documentation: documentation
Status
atlas-only

Why This File Exists

Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.

Dependency Surface

Detected Declarations

Annotated Snippet

==============
OSNOISE Tracer
==============

In the context of high-performance computing (HPC), the Operating System
Noise (*osnoise*) refers to the interference experienced by an application
due to activities inside the operating system. In the context of Linux,
NMIs, IRQs, SoftIRQs, and any other system thread can cause noise to the
system. Moreover, hardware-related jobs can also cause noise, for example,
via SMIs.

hwlat_detector is one of the tools used to identify the most complex
source of noise: *hardware noise*.

In a nutshell, the hwlat_detector creates a thread that runs
periodically for a given period. At the beginning of a period, the thread
disables interrupt and starts sampling. While running, the hwlatd
thread reads the time in a loop. As interrupts are disabled, threads,
IRQs, and SoftIRQs cannot interfere with the hwlatd thread. Hence, the
cause of any gap between two different reads of the time roots either on
NMI or in the hardware itself. At the end of the period, hwlatd enables
interrupts and reports the max observed gap between the reads. It also
prints a NMI occurrence counter. If the output does not report NMI
executions, the user can conclude that the hardware is the culprit for
the latency. The hwlat detects the NMI execution by observing
the entry and exit of a NMI.

The osnoise tracer leverages the hwlat_detector by running a
similar loop with preemption, SoftIRQs and IRQs enabled, thus allowing
all the sources of *osnoise* during its execution. Using the same approach
of hwlat, osnoise takes note of the entry and exit point of any
source of interferences, increasing a per-cpu interference counter. The
osnoise tracer also saves an interference counter for each source of
interference. The interference counter for NMI, IRQs, SoftIRQs, and
threads is increased anytime the tool observes these interferences' entry
events. When a noise happens without any interference from the operating
system level, the hardware noise counter increases, pointing to a
hardware-related noise. In this way, osnoise can account for any
source of interference. At the end of the period, the osnoise tracer
prints the sum of all noise, the max single noise, the percentage of CPU
available for the thread, and the counters for the noise sources.

Usage
-----

Write the ASCII text "osnoise" into the current_tracer file of the
tracing system (generally mounted at /sys/kernel/tracing).

For example::

        [root@f32 ~]# cd /sys/kernel/tracing/
        [root@f32 tracing]# echo osnoise > current_tracer

It is possible to follow the trace by reading the trace file::

        [root@f32 tracing]# cat trace
        # tracer: osnoise
        #
        #                                _-----=> irqs-off
        #                               / _----=> need-resched
        #                              | / _---=> hardirq/softirq
        #                              || / _--=> preempt-depth                            MAX
        #                              || /                                             SINGLE     Interference counters:
        #                              ||||               RUNTIME      NOISE   % OF CPU  NOISE    +-----------------------------+
        #           TASK-PID      CPU# ||||   TIMESTAMP    IN US       IN US  AVAILABLE  IN US     HW    NMI    IRQ   SIRQ THREAD
        #              | |         |   ||||      |           |             |    |            |      |      |      |      |      |
                   <...>-859     [000] ....    81.637220: 1000000        190  99.98100       9     18      0   1007     18      1
                   <...>-860     [001] ....    81.638154: 1000000        656  99.93440      74     23      0   1006     16      3
                   <...>-861     [002] ....    81.638193: 1000000       5675  99.43250     202      6      0   1013     25     21
                   <...>-862     [003] ....    81.638242: 1000000        125  99.98750      45      1      0   1011     23      0

Annotation

Implementation Notes