tracing: Process constants for (un)likely() profiler

When running the likely/unlikely profiler, one of the results did not look
accurate. It noted that the unlikely() in link_path_walk() was 100%
incorrect. When I added a trace_printk() to see what was happening there, it
became 80% correct! Looking deeper into what whas happening, I found that
gcc split that if statement into two paths. One where the if statement
became a constant, the other path a variable. The other path had the if
statement always hit (making the unlikely there, always false), but since
the #define unlikely() has:

  #define unlikely() (__builtin_constant_p(x) ? !!(x) : __branch_check__(x, 0))

Where constants are ignored by the branch profiler, the "constant" path
made by the compiler was ignored, even though it was hit 80% of the time.

By just passing the constant value to the __branch_check__() function and
tracing it out of line (as always correct, as likely/unlikely isn't a factor
for constants), then we get back the accurate readings of branches that were
optimized by gcc causing part of the execution to become constant.

Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
This commit is contained in:
Steven Rostedt (VMware) 2017-01-17 12:29:35 -05:00
parent 6496bb72bf
commit d45ae1f704
2 changed files with 13 additions and 7 deletions

View file

@ -200,8 +200,12 @@ void trace_likely_condition(struct ftrace_branch_data *f, int val, int expect)
}
#endif /* CONFIG_BRANCH_TRACER */
void ftrace_likely_update(struct ftrace_branch_data *f, int val, int expect)
void ftrace_likely_update(struct ftrace_branch_data *f, int val,
int expect, int is_constant)
{
/* A constant is always correct */
if (is_constant)
val = expect;
/*
* I would love to have a trace point here instead, but the
* trace point code is so inundated with unlikely and likely