hwlatdetect.patch

Jon Masters developed this wonderful SMI detector. For details please
consult Documentation/hwlat_detector.txt. It could be ported to Linux
3.0 RT without any major change.

Signed-off-by: Carsten Emde <C.Emde@osadl.org>

1 files changed, 29 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/misc/Kconfig b/drivers/misc/Kconfig
index e94f19d..25ffcfd 100644
--- a/drivers/misc/Kconfig
+++ b/drivers/misc/Kconfig
@@ -121,6 +121,35 @@ config IBM_ASM
 	  for information on the specific driver level and support statement
 	  for your IBM server.
 
+config HWLAT_DETECTOR
+	tristate "Testing module to detect hardware-induced latencies"
+	depends on DEBUG_FS
+	depends on RING_BUFFER
+	default m
+	---help---
+	  A simple hardware latency detector. Use this module to detect
+	  large latencies introduced by the behavior of the underlying
+	  system firmware external to Linux. We do this using periodic
+	  use of stop_machine to grab all available CPUs and measure
+	  for unexplainable gaps in the CPU timestamp counter(s). By
+	  default, the module is not enabled until the "enable" file
+	  within the "hwlat_detector" debugfs directory is toggled.
+
+	  This module is often used to detect SMI (System Management
+	  Interrupts) on x86 systems, though is not x86 specific. To
+	  this end, we default to using a sample window of 1 second,
+	  during which we will sample for 0.5 seconds. If an SMI or
+	  similar event occurs during that time, it is recorded
+	  into an 8K samples global ring buffer until retreived.
+
+	  WARNING: This software should never be enabled (it can be built
+	  but should not be turned on after it is loaded) in a production
+	  environment where high latencies are a concern since the
+	  sampling mechanism actually introduces latencies for
+	  regular tasks while the CPU(s) are being held.
+
+	  If unsure, say N
+
 config PHANTOM
 	tristate "Sensable PHANToM (PCI)"
 	depends on PCI