| Coresight - HW Assisted Tracing on ARM | |
| ====================================== | |
| Author: Mathieu Poirier <[email protected]> | |
| Date: September 11th, 2014 | |
| Introduction | |
| ------------ | |
| Coresight is an umbrella of technologies allowing for the debugging of ARM | |
| based SoC. It includes solutions for JTAG and HW assisted tracing. This | |
| document is concerned with the latter. | |
| HW assisted tracing is becoming increasingly useful when dealing with systems | |
| that have many SoCs and other components like GPU and DMA engines. ARM has | |
| developed a HW assisted tracing solution by means of different components, each | |
| being added to a design at synthesis time to cater to specific tracing needs. | |
| Components are generally categorised as source, link and sinks and are | |
| (usually) discovered using the AMBA bus. | |
| "Sources" generate a compressed stream representing the processor instruction | |
| path based on tracing scenarios as configured by users. From there the stream | |
| flows through the coresight system (via ATB bus) using links that are connecting | |
| the emanating source to a sink(s). Sinks serve as endpoints to the coresight | |
| implementation, either storing the compressed stream in a memory buffer or | |
| creating an interface to the outside world where data can be transferred to a | |
| host without fear of filling up the onboard coresight memory buffer. | |
| At typical coresight system would look like this: | |
| ***************************************************************** | |
| **************************** AMBA AXI ****************************===|| | |
| ***************************************************************** || | |
| ^ ^ | || | |
| | | * ** | |
| 0000000 ::::: 0000000 ::::: ::::: @@@@@@@ |||||||||||| | |
| 0 CPU 0<-->: C : 0 CPU 0<-->: C : : C : @ STM @ || System || | |
| |->0000000 : T : |->0000000 : T : : T :<--->@@@@@ || Memory || | |
| | #######<-->: I : | #######<-->: I : : I : @@@<-| |||||||||||| | |
| | # ETM # ::::: | # PTM # ::::: ::::: @ | | |
| | ##### ^ ^ | ##### ^ ! ^ ! . | ||||||||| | |
| | |->### | ! | |->### | ! | ! . | || DAP || | |
| | | # | ! | | # | ! | ! . | ||||||||| | |
| | | . | ! | | . | ! | ! . | | | | |
| | | . | ! | | . | ! | ! . | | * | |
| | | . | ! | | . | ! | ! . | | SWD/ | |
| | | . | ! | | . | ! | ! . | | JTAG | |
| *****************************************************************<-| | |
| *************************** AMBA Debug APB ************************ | |
| ***************************************************************** | |
| | . ! . ! ! . | | |
| | . * . * * . | | |
| ***************************************************************** | |
| ******************** Cross Trigger Matrix (CTM) ******************* | |
| ***************************************************************** | |
| | . ^ . . | | |
| | * ! * * | | |
| ***************************************************************** | |
| ****************** AMBA Advanced Trace Bus (ATB) ****************** | |
| ***************************************************************** | |
| | ! =============== | | |
| | * ===== F =====<---------| | |
| | ::::::::: ==== U ==== | |
| |-->:: CTI ::<!! === N === | |
| | ::::::::: ! == N == | |
| | ^ * == E == | |
| | ! &&&&&&&&& IIIIIII == L == | |
| |------>&& ETB &&<......II I ======= | |
| | ! &&&&&&&&& II I . | |
| | ! I I . | |
| | ! I REP I<.......... | |
| | ! I I | |
| | !!>&&&&&&&&& II I *Source: ARM ltd. | |
| |------>& TPIU &<......II I DAP = Debug Access Port | |
| &&&&&&&&& IIIIIII ETM = Embedded Trace Macrocell | |
| ; PTM = Program Trace Macrocell | |
| ; CTI = Cross Trigger Interface | |
| * ETB = Embedded Trace Buffer | |
| To trace port TPIU= Trace Port Interface Unit | |
| SWD = Serial Wire Debug | |
| While on target configuration of the components is done via the APB bus, | |
| all trace data are carried out-of-band on the ATB bus. The CTM provides | |
| a way to aggregate and distribute signals between CoreSight components. | |
| The coresight framework provides a central point to represent, configure and | |
| manage coresight devices on a platform. This first implementation centers on | |
| the basic tracing functionality, enabling components such ETM/PTM, funnel, | |
| replicator, TMC, TPIU and ETB. Future work will enable more | |
| intricate IP blocks such as STM and CTI. | |
| Acronyms and Classification | |
| --------------------------- | |
| Acronyms: | |
| PTM: Program Trace Macrocell | |
| ETM: Embedded Trace Macrocell | |
| STM: System trace Macrocell | |
| ETB: Embedded Trace Buffer | |
| ITM: Instrumentation Trace Macrocell | |
| TPIU: Trace Port Interface Unit | |
| TMC-ETR: Trace Memory Controller, configured as Embedded Trace Router | |
| TMC-ETF: Trace Memory Controller, configured as Embedded Trace FIFO | |
| CTI: Cross Trigger Interface | |
| Classification: | |
| Source: | |
| ETMv3.x ETMv4, PTMv1.0, PTMv1.1, STM, STM500, ITM | |
| Link: | |
| Funnel, replicator (intelligent or not), TMC-ETR | |
| Sinks: | |
| ETBv1.0, ETB1.1, TPIU, TMC-ETF | |
| Misc: | |
| CTI | |
| Device Tree Bindings | |
| ---------------------- | |
| See Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/coresight.txt for details. | |
| As of this writing drivers for ITM, STMs and CTIs are not provided but are | |
| expected to be added as the solution matures. | |
| Framework and implementation | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| The coresight framework provides a central point to represent, configure and | |
| manage coresight devices on a platform. Any coresight compliant device can | |
| register with the framework for as long as they use the right APIs: | |
| struct coresight_device *coresight_register(struct coresight_desc *desc); | |
| void coresight_unregister(struct coresight_device *csdev); | |
| The registering function is taking a "struct coresight_device *csdev" and | |
| register the device with the core framework. The unregister function takes | |
| a reference to a "struct coresight_device", obtained at registration time. | |
| If everything goes well during the registration process the new devices will | |
| show up under /sys/bus/coresight/devices, as showns here for a TC2 platform: | |
| root:~# ls /sys/bus/coresight/devices/ | |
| replicator 20030000.tpiu 2201c000.ptm 2203c000.etm 2203e000.etm | |
| 20010000.etb 20040000.funnel 2201d000.ptm 2203d000.etm | |
| root:~# | |
| The functions take a "struct coresight_device", which looks like this: | |
| struct coresight_desc { | |
| enum coresight_dev_type type; | |
| struct coresight_dev_subtype subtype; | |
| const struct coresight_ops *ops; | |
| struct coresight_platform_data *pdata; | |
| struct device *dev; | |
| const struct attribute_group **groups; | |
| }; | |
| The "coresight_dev_type" identifies what the device is, i.e, source link or | |
| sink while the "coresight_dev_subtype" will characterise that type further. | |
| The "struct coresight_ops" is mandatory and will tell the framework how to | |
| perform base operations related to the components, each component having | |
| a different set of requirement. For that "struct coresight_ops_sink", | |
| "struct coresight_ops_link" and "struct coresight_ops_source" have been | |
| provided. | |
| The next field, "struct coresight_platform_data *pdata" is acquired by calling | |
| "of_get_coresight_platform_data()", as part of the driver's _probe routine and | |
| "struct device *dev" gets the device reference embedded in the "amba_device": | |
| static int etm_probe(struct amba_device *adev, const struct amba_id *id) | |
| { | |
| ... | |
| ... | |
| drvdata->dev = &adev->dev; | |
| ... | |
| } | |
| Specific class of device (source, link, or sink) have generic operations | |
| that can be performed on them (see "struct coresight_ops"). The | |
| "**groups" is a list of sysfs entries pertaining to operations | |
| specific to that component only. "Implementation defined" customisations are | |
| expected to be accessed and controlled using those entries. | |
| How to use the tracer modules | |
| ----------------------------- | |
| There are two ways to use the Coresight framework: 1) using the perf cmd line | |
| tools and 2) interacting directly with the Coresight devices using the sysFS | |
| interface. Preference is given to the former as using the sysFS interface | |
| requires a deep understanding of the Coresight HW. The following sections | |
| provide details on using both methods. | |
| 1) Using the sysFS interface: | |
| Before trace collection can start, a coresight sink needs to be identified. | |
| There is no limit on the amount of sinks (nor sources) that can be enabled at | |
| any given moment. As a generic operation, all device pertaining to the sink | |
| class will have an "active" entry in sysfs: | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# ls | |
| replicator 20030000.tpiu 2201c000.ptm 2203c000.etm 2203e000.etm | |
| 20010000.etb 20040000.funnel 2201d000.ptm 2203d000.etm | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# ls 20010000.etb | |
| enable_sink status trigger_cntr | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# echo 1 > 20010000.etb/enable_sink | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# cat 20010000.etb/enable_sink | |
| 1 | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# | |
| At boot time the current etm3x driver will configure the first address | |
| comparator with "_stext" and "_etext", essentially tracing any instruction | |
| that falls within that range. As such "enabling" a source will immediately | |
| trigger a trace capture: | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# echo 1 > 2201c000.ptm/enable_source | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# cat 2201c000.ptm/enable_source | |
| 1 | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# cat 20010000.etb/status | |
| Depth: 0x2000 | |
| Status: 0x1 | |
| RAM read ptr: 0x0 | |
| RAM wrt ptr: 0x19d3 <----- The write pointer is moving | |
| Trigger cnt: 0x0 | |
| Control: 0x1 | |
| Flush status: 0x0 | |
| Flush ctrl: 0x2001 | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# | |
| Trace collection is stopped the same way: | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# echo 0 > 2201c000.ptm/enable_source | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# | |
| The content of the ETB buffer can be harvested directly from /dev: | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# dd if=/dev/20010000.etb \ | |
| of=~/cstrace.bin | |
| 64+0 records in | |
| 64+0 records out | |
| 32768 bytes (33 kB) copied, 0.00125258 s, 26.2 MB/s | |
| root:/sys/bus/coresight/devices# | |
| The file cstrace.bin can be decompressed using "ptm2human", DS-5 or Trace32. | |
| Following is a DS-5 output of an experimental loop that increments a variable up | |
| to a certain value. The example is simple and yet provides a glimpse of the | |
| wealth of possibilities that coresight provides. | |
| Info Tracing enabled | |
| Instruction 106378866 0x8026B53C E52DE004 false PUSH {lr} | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B540 E24DD00C false SUB sp,sp,#0xc | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B544 E3A03000 false MOV r3,#0 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B548 E58D3004 false STR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B54C E59D3004 false LDR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B550 E3530004 false CMP r3,#4 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B554 E2833001 false ADD r3,r3,#1 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B558 E58D3004 false STR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B55C DAFFFFFA true BLE {pc}-0x10 ; 0x8026b54c | |
| Timestamp Timestamp: 17106715833 | |
| Instruction 319 0x8026B54C E59D3004 false LDR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B550 E3530004 false CMP r3,#4 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B554 E2833001 false ADD r3,r3,#1 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B558 E58D3004 false STR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B55C DAFFFFFA true BLE {pc}-0x10 ; 0x8026b54c | |
| Instruction 9 0x8026B54C E59D3004 false LDR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B550 E3530004 false CMP r3,#4 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B554 E2833001 false ADD r3,r3,#1 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B558 E58D3004 false STR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B55C DAFFFFFA true BLE {pc}-0x10 ; 0x8026b54c | |
| Instruction 7 0x8026B54C E59D3004 false LDR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B550 E3530004 false CMP r3,#4 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B554 E2833001 false ADD r3,r3,#1 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B558 E58D3004 false STR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B55C DAFFFFFA true BLE {pc}-0x10 ; 0x8026b54c | |
| Instruction 7 0x8026B54C E59D3004 false LDR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B550 E3530004 false CMP r3,#4 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B554 E2833001 false ADD r3,r3,#1 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B558 E58D3004 false STR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B55C DAFFFFFA true BLE {pc}-0x10 ; 0x8026b54c | |
| Instruction 10 0x8026B54C E59D3004 false LDR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B550 E3530004 false CMP r3,#4 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B554 E2833001 false ADD r3,r3,#1 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B558 E58D3004 false STR r3,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B55C DAFFFFFA true BLE {pc}-0x10 ; 0x8026b54c | |
| Instruction 6 0x8026B560 EE1D3F30 false MRC p15,#0x0,r3,c13,c0,#1 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B564 E1A0100D false MOV r1,sp | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B568 E3C12D7F false BIC r2,r1,#0x1fc0 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B56C E3C2203F false BIC r2,r2,#0x3f | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B570 E59D1004 false LDR r1,[sp,#4] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B574 E59F0010 false LDR r0,[pc,#16] ; [0x8026B58C] = 0x80550368 | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B578 E592200C false LDR r2,[r2,#0xc] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B57C E59221D0 false LDR r2,[r2,#0x1d0] | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B580 EB07A4CF true BL {pc}+0x1e9344 ; 0x804548c4 | |
| Info Tracing enabled | |
| Instruction 13570831 0x8026B584 E28DD00C false ADD sp,sp,#0xc | |
| Instruction 0 0x8026B588 E8BD8000 true LDM sp!,{pc} | |
| Timestamp Timestamp: 17107041535 | |
| 2) Using perf framework: | |
| Coresight tracers are represented using the Perf framework's Performance | |
| Monitoring Unit (PMU) abstraction. As such the perf framework takes charge of | |
| controlling when tracing gets enabled based on when the process of interest is | |
| scheduled. When configured in a system, Coresight PMUs will be listed when | |
| queried by the perf command line tool: | |
| linaro@linaro-nano:~$ ./perf list pmu | |
| List of pre-defined events (to be used in -e): | |
| cs_etm// [Kernel PMU event] | |
| linaro@linaro-nano:~$ | |
| Regardless of the number of tracers available in a system (usually equal to the | |
| amount of processor cores), the "cs_etm" PMU will be listed only once. | |
| A Coresight PMU works the same way as any other PMU, i.e the name of the PMU is | |
| listed along with configuration options within forward slashes '/'. Since a | |
| Coresight system will typically have more than one sink, the name of the sink to | |
| work with needs to be specified as an event option. Names for sink to choose | |
| from are listed in sysFS under ($SYSFS)/bus/coresight/devices: | |
| root@linaro-nano:~# ls /sys/bus/coresight/devices/ | |
| 20010000.etf 20040000.funnel 20100000.stm 22040000.etm | |
| 22140000.etm 230c0000.funnel 23240000.etm 20030000.tpiu | |
| 20070000.etr 20120000.replicator 220c0000.funnel | |
| 23040000.etm 23140000.etm 23340000.etm | |
| root@linaro-nano:~# perf record -e cs_etm/@20070000.etr/u --per-thread program | |
| The syntax within the forward slashes '/' is important. The '@' character | |
| tells the parser that a sink is about to be specified and that this is the sink | |
| to use for the trace session. | |
| More information on the above and other example on how to use Coresight with | |
| the perf tools can be found in the "HOWTO.md" file of the openCSD gitHub | |
| repository [3]. | |
| 2.1) AutoFDO analysis using the perf tools: | |
| perf can be used to record and analyze trace of programs. | |
| Execution can be recorded using 'perf record' with the cs_etm event, | |
| specifying the name of the sink to record to, e.g: | |
| perf record -e cs_etm/@20070000.etr/u --per-thread | |
| The 'perf report' and 'perf script' commands can be used to analyze execution, | |
| synthesizing instruction and branch events from the instruction trace. | |
| 'perf inject' can be used to replace the trace data with the synthesized events. | |
| The --itrace option controls the type and frequency of synthesized events | |
| (see perf documentation). | |
| Note that only 64-bit programs are currently supported - further work is | |
| required to support instruction decode of 32-bit Arm programs. | |
| Generating coverage files for Feedback Directed Optimization: AutoFDO | |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 'perf inject' accepts the --itrace option in which case tracing data is | |
| removed and replaced with the synthesized events. e.g. | |
| perf inject --itrace --strip -i perf.data -o perf.data.new | |
| Below is an example of using ARM ETM for autoFDO. It requires autofdo | |
| (https://github.com/google/autofdo) and gcc version 5. The bubble | |
| sort example is from the AutoFDO tutorial (https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/AutoFDO/Tutorial). | |
| $ gcc-5 -O3 sort.c -o sort | |
| $ taskset -c 2 ./sort | |
| Bubble sorting array of 30000 elements | |
| 5910 ms | |
| $ perf record -e cs_etm/@20070000.etr/u --per-thread taskset -c 2 ./sort | |
| Bubble sorting array of 30000 elements | |
| 12543 ms | |
| [ perf record: Woken up 35 times to write data ] | |
| [ perf record: Captured and wrote 69.640 MB perf.data ] | |
| $ perf inject -i perf.data -o inj.data --itrace=il64 --strip | |
| $ create_gcov --binary=./sort --profile=inj.data --gcov=sort.gcov -gcov_version=1 | |
| $ gcc-5 -O3 -fauto-profile=sort.gcov sort.c -o sort_autofdo | |
| $ taskset -c 2 ./sort_autofdo | |
| Bubble sorting array of 30000 elements | |
| 5806 ms | |
| How to use the STM module | |
| ------------------------- | |
| Using the System Trace Macrocell module is the same as the tracers - the only | |
| difference is that clients are driving the trace capture rather | |
| than the program flow through the code. | |
| As with any other CoreSight component, specifics about the STM tracer can be | |
| found in sysfs with more information on each entry being found in [1]: | |
| root@genericarmv8:~# ls /sys/bus/coresight/devices/20100000.stm | |
| enable_source hwevent_select port_enable subsystem uevent | |
| hwevent_enable mgmt port_select traceid | |
| root@genericarmv8:~# | |
| Like any other source a sink needs to be identified and the STM enabled before | |
| being used: | |
| root@genericarmv8:~# echo 1 > /sys/bus/coresight/devices/20010000.etf/enable_sink | |
| root@genericarmv8:~# echo 1 > /sys/bus/coresight/devices/20100000.stm/enable_source | |
| From there user space applications can request and use channels using the devfs | |
| interface provided for that purpose by the generic STM API: | |
| root@genericarmv8:~# ls -l /dev/20100000.stm | |
| crw------- 1 root root 10, 61 Jan 3 18:11 /dev/20100000.stm | |
| root@genericarmv8:~# | |
| Details on how to use the generic STM API can be found here [2]. | |
| [1]. Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-coresight-devices-stm | |
| [2]. Documentation/trace/stm.rst | |
| [3]. https://github.com/Linaro/perf-opencsd |