NAME

       hwlatdetect - program to control the ftrace kernel hardware latency detection

SYNOPSIS

       hwlatdetect  [  --duration=<time>  ]  [--threshold=<usecs>  ]  [--window=<time interval> ]
       [--width=<time interval> ] [--hardlimit=<microsecond value> ] [--report=<path> ]  [--debug
       ] [--quiet ] [--watch]

DESCRIPTION

       hwlatdetect  is  a  program  that  controls  the  ftrace  kernel hardware latency detector
       (hwlatdetector).hwlatdetector is used to detect large  system  latencies  induced  by  the
       behavior  of  certain  underlying  hardware or firmware, independent of Linux itself.  The
       code was developed originally  to  detect  SMIs  (System  Management  Interrupts)  on  x86
       systems,  however  there  is nothing x86 specific about it.  It was originally written for
       use by the "RT" patch set since the Real Time kernel is highly latency sensitive.

       SMIs are usually not serviced by the Linux kernel, which typically does not even know that
       they  are  occurring.  SMIs  are  instead are set up by BIOS code and are serviced by BIOS
       code, usually for "critical" events such  as  management  of  thermal  sensors  and  fans.
       Sometimes  though,  SMIs  are used for other tasks and those tasks can spend an inordinate
       amount of time in the handler (sometimes measured in milliseconds). Obviously  this  is  a
       problem if you are trying to keep event service latencies down in the microsecond range.

       The  ftrace  hardware  latency  detector works by hogging all of the cpus for configurable
       amounts of time (by calling stop_machine()), polling the CPU Time Stamp Counter  for  some
       period,  then  looking for gaps in the TSC data. Any gap indicates a time when the polling
       was interrupted and since the machine is stopped and interrupts turned off the only  thing
       that could do that would be an SMI.

       The  hwlatdetector  script  manages  the  mounting/unmounting  of  the  debugfs as well as
       interacting with  the  ftrace  hwlatdetector  If  the  debugfs  is  already  mounted  then
       hwlatdetector will not unmount it after a run.

OPTIONS

       --duration=<time>{s,m,d}
              Run  the  detector  logic  in for the specified duration. The duration is a base 10
              integer number that defaults to a value in  seconds.  An  optional  suffix  may  be
              specified to indicate minutes, hours or days.

       --threshold=<microsecond value>
              Specify  the  TSC gap used to detect an SMI. Any gap value greater than <threshold>
              is considered to be the result of an SMI occurring.

       --hardlimit=<microsecond value>
              The test is considered to fail if a value above the hardlimit occurs.  This affects
              the exit value of hwlatdetect

       --window=<time value>{us,ms,s,m,d}
              specify the size of the sample window. Converted to microseconds when passed to the
              kernel.

       --width=<time value>{us,ms,s,m,d}
              The amount of time  within  the  sample  window  where  the  detector  is  actually
              sampling. Must be less than the --window value.

       --report=FILENAME
              Specify the output filename of the detector report. Default behavior is to print to
              standard output

       --debug
              Turn on debug prints

       --quiet
              Turn off all information prints

       --watch
              print sample data to stdout as it arrives

AUTHOR

       hwlatdetect was written by Clark Williams <williams@redhat.com>
       hwlat_detector.ko was written by Jon Masters <jcm@redhat.com>

                                          May  12, 2009                            HWLATDETECT(8)