perf_event_open Overflow Signal

Question

I want to count the (more or less) exact amount of instructions for some piece of code. Additionally, I want to receive a Signal after a specific amount of instructions passed.<

Answer 1

I want to count the (more or less) exact amount of instructions for some piece of code. Additionally, I want to receive a Signal after a specific amount of instructions passed.

You have two task which may conflict with each other. When you want to get counting (exact amounts of some hardware event), just use performance monitoring unit of your CPU in counting mode (don't set sample_period/sample_freq of perf_event_attr structure used) and place the measurement code in your target program (as it was done in your example). In this mode according to the man page of perf_event_open no overflows will be generated (CPU's PMU are usually 64-bit wide and don't overflow when not set to small negative value when sampling mode is used):

Overflows are generated only by sampling events (sample_period must a nonzero value).

To count part of program, use ioctls of perf_event_open returned fd as described in man page

perf_event ioctl calls - Various ioctls act on perf_event_open() file descriptors: PERF_EVENT_IOC_ENABLE ... PERF_EVENT_IOC_DISABLE ... PERF_EVENT_IOC_RESET

You can read current value with rdpmc (on x86) or by read syscall on the fd like in the short example from the man page:

   #include <stdlib.h>
   #include <stdio.h>
   #include <unistd.h>
   #include <string.h>
   #include <sys/ioctl.h>
   #include <linux/perf_event.h>
   #include <asm/unistd.h>

   static long
   perf_event_open(struct perf_event_attr *hw_event, pid_t pid,
                   int cpu, int group_fd, unsigned long flags)
   {
       int ret;

       ret = syscall(__NR_perf_event_open, hw_event, pid, cpu,
                      group_fd, flags);
       return ret;
   }

   int
   main(int argc, char **argv)
   {
       struct perf_event_attr pe;
       long long count;
       int fd;

       memset(&pe, 0, sizeof(struct perf_event_attr));
       pe.type = PERF_TYPE_HARDWARE;
       pe.size = sizeof(struct perf_event_attr);
       pe.config = PERF_COUNT_HW_INSTRUCTIONS;
       pe.disabled = 1;
       pe.exclude_kernel = 1;
       pe.exclude_hv = 1;

       fd = perf_event_open(&pe, 0, -1, -1, 0);
       if (fd == -1) {
          fprintf(stderr, "Error opening leader %llx\n", pe.config);
          exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
       }

       ioctl(fd, PERF_EVENT_IOC_RESET, 0);
       ioctl(fd, PERF_EVENT_IOC_ENABLE, 0);

       printf("Measuring instruction count for this printf\n");
       /* Place target code here instead of printf */

       ioctl(fd, PERF_EVENT_IOC_DISABLE, 0);
       read(fd, &count, sizeof(long long));

       printf("Used %lld instructions\n", count);

       close(fd);
   }

Additionally, I want to receive a Signal after a specific amount of instructions passed.

Do you really want to get signal or you just need instruction pointers at every 1000 instructions executed? If you want to collect pointers, use perf_even_open with sampling mode, but do it from other program to disable measuring of the event collection code. Also, it will have less negative effect on your target program, if you will use not signals for every overflow (with huge amount of kernel-tracer interactions and switching from/to kernel), but instead use capabilities of perf_events to collect several overflow events into single mmap buffer and poll on this buffer. On overflow interrupt from PMU perf interrupt handler will be called to save the instruction pointer into buffer and then counting will be reset and program will return to execution. In your example, perf interrupt handler will woke your program, it will do several syscalls, return to kernel and then kernel will restart target code (so overhead per sample is greater than using mmap and parsing it). With precise_ip flag you may activate advanced sampling of your PMU (if it has such mode, like PEBS and PREC_DIST in intel x86/em64t for some counters like INST_RETIRED, UOPS_RETIRED, BR_INST_RETIRED, BR_MISP_RETIRED, MEM_UOPS_RETIRED, MEM_LOAD_UOPS_RETIRED, MEM_LOAD_UOPS_LLC_HIT_RETIRED and with simple hack to cycles too; or like IBS of AMD x86/amd64; paper about PEBS and IBS), when instruction address is saved directly by hardware with low skid. Some very advanced PMUs has ability to do sampling in hardware, storing overflow information of several events in row with automatic reset of counter without software interrupts (some descriptions on precise_ip are in the same paper).

I don't know if it is possible in perf_events subsystem and in your CPU to have two perf_event tasks active at same time: both count events in the target process and in the same time have sampling from other process. With advanced PMU this can be possible in the hardware and perf_events in modern kernel may allow it. But you give no details on your kernel version and your CPU vendor and family, so we can't answer this part.

You also may try other APIs to access PMU like PAPI or likwid (https://github.com/RRZE-HPC/likwid). Some of them may directly read PMU registers (sometimes MSR) and may allow sampling at the same time when counting is enabled.