bpf: Add bpf_read_branch_records() helper
Branch records are a CPU feature that can be configured to record certain branches that are taken during code execution. This data is particularly interesting for profile guided optimizations. perf has had branch record support for a while but the data collection can be a bit coarse grained. We (Facebook) have seen in experiments that associating metadata with branch records can improve results (after postprocessing). We generally use bpf_probe_read_*() to get metadata out of userspace. That's why bpf support for branch records is useful. Aside from this particular use case, having branch data available to bpf progs can be useful to get stack traces out of userspace applications that omit frame pointers. Signed-off-by: Daniel Xu <dxu@dxuuu.xyz> Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org> Acked-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@fb.com> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20200218030432.4600-2-dxu@dxuuu.xyz
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