Ubuntu Manpage: perf-stat - Run a command and gather performance counter statistics

Provided by: linux-tools-common_4.15.0-213.224_all

NAME

       perf-stat - Run a command and gather performance counter statistics

SYNOPSIS

       perf stat [-e <EVENT> | --event=EVENT] [-a] <command>
       perf stat [-e <EVENT> | --event=EVENT] [-a] — <command> [<options>]
       perf stat [-e <EVENT> | --event=EVENT] [-a] record [-o file] — <command> [<options>]
       perf stat report [-i file]

DESCRIPTION

       This command runs a command and gathers performance counter statistics from it.

OPTIONS

<command>...
Any command you can specify in a shell.

record
See STAT RECORD.

report
See STAT REPORT.

-e, --event=
Select the PMU event. Selection can be:

• a symbolic event name (use perf list to list all events)

• a raw PMU event (eventsel+umask) in the form of rNNN where NNN is a hexadecimal event descriptor.

• a symbolic or raw PMU event followed by an optional colon and a list of event modifiers, e.g.,
cpu-cycles:p. See the perf-list(1) man page for details on event modifiers.

• a symbolically formed event like pmu/param1=0x3,param2/ where param1 and param2 are defined as
formats for the PMU in /sys/bus/event_source/devices/<pmu>/format/*

• a symbolically formed event like pmu/config=M,config1=N,config2=K/ where M, N, K are numbers (in
decimal, hex, octal format). Acceptable values for each of config, config1 and config2 parameters
are defined by corresponding entries in /sys/bus/event_source/devices/<pmu>/format/*

-i, --no-inherit
child tasks do not inherit counters

-p, --pid=<pid>
stat events on existing process id (comma separated list)

-t, --tid=<tid>
stat events on existing thread id (comma separated list)

-a, --all-cpus
system-wide collection from all CPUs (default if no target is specified)

-c, --scale
scale/normalize counter values

-d, --detailed
print more detailed statistics, can be specified up to 3 times

-d: detailed events, L1 and LLC data cache
-d -d: more detailed events, dTLB and iTLB events
-d -d -d: very detailed events, adding prefetch events

-r, --repeat=<n>
repeat command and print average + stddev (max: 100). 0 means forever.

-B, --big-num
print large numbers with thousands' separators according to locale

-C, --cpu=
Count only on the list of CPUs provided. Multiple CPUs can be provided as a comma-separated list with
no space: 0,1. Ranges of CPUs are specified with -: 0-2. In per-thread mode, this option is ignored.
The -a option is still necessary to activate system-wide monitoring. Default is to count on all CPUs.

-A, --no-aggr
Do not aggregate counts across all monitored CPUs.

-n, --null
null run - don’t start any counters

-v, --verbose
be more verbose (show counter open errors, etc)

-x SEP, --field-separator SEP
print counts using a CSV-style output to make it easy to import directly into spreadsheets. Columns
are separated by the string specified in SEP.

-G name, --cgroup name
monitor only in the container (cgroup) called "name". This option is available only in per-cpu mode.
The cgroup filesystem must be mounted. All threads belonging to container "name" are monitored when
they run on the monitored CPUs. Multiple cgroups can be provided. Each cgroup is applied to the
corresponding event, i.e., first cgroup to first event, second cgroup to second event and so on. It
is possible to provide an empty cgroup (monitor all the time) using, e.g., -G foo,,bar. Cgroups must
have corresponding events, i.e., they always refer to events defined earlier on the command line.

-o file, --output file
Print the output into the designated file.

--append
Append to the output file designated with the -o option. Ignored if -o is not specified.

--log-fd
Log output to fd, instead of stderr. Complementary to --output, and mutually exclusive with it.
--append may be used here. Examples: 3>results perf stat --log-fd 3 — $cmd 3>>results perf stat
--log-fd 3 --append — $cmd

--pre, --post
Pre and post measurement hooks, e.g.:

perf stat --repeat 10 --null --sync --pre make -s O=defconfig-build/clean — make -s -j64
O=defconfig-build/ bzImage

-I msecs, --interval-print msecs
Print count deltas every N milliseconds (minimum: 10ms) The overhead percentage could be high in some
cases, for instance with small, sub 100ms intervals. Use with caution. example: perf stat -I 1000 -e
cycles -a sleep 5

--metric-only
Only print computed metrics. Print them in a single line. Don’t show any raw values. Not supported
with --per-thread.

--per-socket
Aggregate counts per processor socket for system-wide mode measurements. This is a useful mode to
detect imbalance between sockets. To enable this mode, use --per-socket in addition to -a.
(system-wide). The output includes the socket number and the number of online processors on that
socket. This is useful to gauge the amount of aggregation.

--per-core
Aggregate counts per physical processor for system-wide mode measurements. This is a useful mode to
detect imbalance between physical cores. To enable this mode, use --per-core in addition to -a.
(system-wide). The output includes the core number and the number of online logical processors on
that physical processor.

--per-thread
Aggregate counts per monitored threads, when monitoring threads (-t option) or processes (-p option).

-D msecs, --delay msecs
After starting the program, wait msecs before measuring. This is useful to filter out the startup
phase of the program, which is often very different.

-T, --transaction
Print statistics of transactional execution if supported.

STAT RECORD

       Stores stat data into perf data file.

       -o file, --output file
           Output file name.

STAT REPORT

Reads and reports stat data from perf data file.

-i file, --input file
Input file name.

--per-socket
Aggregate counts per processor socket for system-wide mode measurements.

--per-core
Aggregate counts per physical processor for system-wide mode measurements.

-M, --metrics
Print metrics or metricgroups specified in a comma separated list. For a group all metrics from the
group are added. The events from the metrics are automatically measured. See perf list output for the
possble metrics and metricgroups.

-A, --no-aggr
Do not aggregate counts across all monitored CPUs.

--topdown
Print top down level 1 metrics if supported by the CPU. This allows to determine bottle necks in the
CPU pipeline for CPU bound workloads, by breaking the cycles consumed down into frontend bound,
backend bound, bad speculation and retiring.

Frontend bound means that the CPU cannot fetch and decode instructions fast enough. Backend bound means
that computation or memory access is the bottle neck. Bad Speculation means that the CPU wasted cycles
due to branch mispredictions and similar issues. Retiring means that the CPU computed without an
apparently bottleneck. The bottleneck is only the real bottleneck if the workload is actually bound by
the CPU and not by something else.

For best results it is usually a good idea to use it with interval mode like -I 1000, as the bottleneck
of workloads can change often.

The top down metrics are collected per core instead of per CPU thread. Per core mode is automatically
enabled and -a (global monitoring) is needed, requiring root rights or perf.perf_event_paranoid=-1.

Topdown uses the full Performance Monitoring Unit, and needs disabling of the NMI watchdog (as root):
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/nmi_watchdog for best results. Otherwise the bottlenecks may be inconsistent on
workload with changing phases.

This enables --metric-only, unless overriden with --no-metric-only.

To interpret the results it is usually needed to know on which CPUs the workload runs on. If needed the
CPUs can be forced using taskset.

--no-merge
Do not merge results from same PMUs.

--smi-cost
Measure SMI cost if msr/aperf/ and msr/smi/ events are supported.

During the measurement, the /sys/device/cpu/freeze_on_smi will be set to freeze core counters on SMI. The
aperf counter will not be effected by the setting. The cost of SMI can be measured by (aperf - unhalted
core cycles).

In practice, the percentages of SMI cycles is very useful for performance oriented analysis.
--metric_only will be applied by default. The output is SMI cycles%, equals to (aperf - unhalted core
cycles) / aperf

Users who wants to get the actual value can apply --no-metric-only.

EXAMPLES

       $ perf stat — make -j

           Performance counter stats for 'make -j':

           8117.370256  task clock ticks     #      11.281 CPU utilization factor
                   678  context switches     #       0.000 M/sec
                   133  CPU migrations       #       0.000 M/sec
                235724  pagefaults           #       0.029 M/sec
           24821162526  CPU cycles           #    3057.784 M/sec
           18687303457  instructions         #    2302.138 M/sec
             172158895  cache references     #      21.209 M/sec
              27075259  cache misses         #       3.335 M/sec

           Wall-clock time elapsed:   719.554352 msecs

CSV FORMAT

       With -x, perf stat is able to output a not-quite-CSV format output Commas in the output are not put into
       "". To make it easy to parse it is recommended to use a different character like -x \;

       The fields are in this order:

       •   optional usec time stamp in fractions of second (with -I xxx)

       •   optional CPU, core, or socket identifier

       •   optional number of logical CPUs aggregated

       •   counter value

       •   unit of the counter value or empty

       •   event name

       •   run time of counter

       •   percentage of measurement time the counter was running

       •   optional variance if multiple values are collected with -r

       •   optional metric value

       •   optional unit of metric

       Additional metrics may be printed with all earlier fields being empty.