perf/x86: Use rdpmc() rather than rdmsr() when possible in the kernel
The rdpmc instruction is faster than the equivelant rdmsr call, so use it when possible in the kernel. The perfctr kernel patches did this, after extensive testing showed rdpmc to always be faster (One can look in etc/costs in the perfctr-2.6 package to see a historical list of the overhead). I have done some tests on a 3.2 kernel, the kernel module I used was included in the first posting of this patch: rdmsr rdpmc Core2 T9900: 203.9 cycles 30.9 cycles AMD fam0fh: 56.2 cycles 9.8 cycles Atom 6/28/2: 129.7 cycles 50.6 cycles The speedup of using rdpmc is large. [ It's probably possible (and desirable) to do this without requiring a new field in the hw_perf_event structure, but the fixed events make this tricky. ] Signed-off-by: Vince Weaver <vweaver1@eecs.utk.edu> Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl> Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/alpine.DEB.2.00.1203011724030.26934@cl320.eecs.utk.eduSigned-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
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