On 09/01/2016 01:33 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote: >> - is that what perf event grouping is ? > > Again, nope. Perf event groups are single counter (so no implicit > addition) that are co-scheduled on the PMU. I'm not sure I understand - does this require specific PMU/arch support - as in multiple conditions feeding to same counter. How does perf user make use of this info - I tried googling around but can't seem to find anything which explains the semantics. I can see that group events to work on ARC (although in our case a counter can cont one condition at a time only) and the results seem to be similar whther we group or not. ------------->8------------ [ARCLinux]# perf stat -e {cycles,instructions} hackbench Running with 10*40 (== 400) tasks. Time: 37.430 Performance counter stats for 'hackbench': 3487777173 cycles 1351709784 instructions # 0.39 insn per cycle 38.957481536 seconds time elapsed [ARCLinux]# perf stat -e cycles hackbench Running with 10*40 (== 400) tasks. Time: 36.735 Performance counter stats for 'hackbench': 3426151391 cycles 38.247235981 seconds time elapsed [ARCLinux]# [ARCLinux]# perf stat -e instructions hackbench Running with 10*40 (== 400) tasks. Time: 37.537 Performance counter stats for 'hackbench': 1355421559 instructions 39.061784281 seconds time elapsed ------------->8------------ ... > > You can do it like: > > perf stat -e '{cycles,instructions}' > > Which will place the cycles event and the instructions event in a group > and thereby guarantee they're co-scheduled. Again when you say co-scheduled what do you mean - why would anyone use the event grouping - is it when they only have 1 counter and they want to count 2 conditions/events at the same time - isn't this same as event multiplexing ? -Vineet