I'm not sure I made the example clear.
Let's say I have a memory controller event called memory_write and it
has two attributes: low_addr and high_addr... writes to addresses
between the low_addr and high_addr will increment the counter.
As a user, I want to be able to specify a particular memory range, let's
say 0x1000000..0x2000000
A sysfs structure like this might be constructed:
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr/low_addr
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr/low_addr/min
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr/low_addr/max
In another posting I had also added a bit shift value, but there are so
few bits left in the attr->config, that I'm not sure this is a very
extensible mechanism, but just for the sake of illustration of the basic
idea, I'll add it here:
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr/low_addr/shift
Then the same thing is repeated for the other attribute:
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr/high_addr
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr/high_addr/min
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr/high_addr/max
/sys/devices/system/node/events/memory_write/attr/high_addr/shift
In this scenario, a user tool (like perf) would be able to see that
there are attributes associated with the memory_write event, and it
knows the names and range of allowed values for these attributes. The
shift value tells the tool how much to shift the attribute value before
OR'ing it into the attr->config value.
If we find that more than 64 bits are needed for the event code plus the
attribute values, perhaps shift values greater than 64 would denote to
place the attribute bits into a new attr field, like
attr->config_extra[shift / 64]
On the perf command line, then, a user could specify something like:
perf stat -e node::memory_write:low_addr=0x1000000:high_addr=0x2000000
What do you think?
- Corey
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