MEM_*_RETIRED events on Ivy Bridge blacklisted in kernel

Hi all,

since there is a kernel patch [1] which disables MEM_*_RETIRED events on
Ivy Bridge due to Intel Erratum BV98 [2], maybe the events should be
disabled in oprofile too.

Quoting from the Erratum [2]:

"When operating with SMT enabled, a memory at-retirement performance
monitoring event (from the list below) may be dropped or may increment
an enabled event on the corresponding counter with the same number on
the physical core's other thread rather than the thread experiencing the
event. Processors with SMT disabled in BIOS are not affected by this
erratum."

Since using the affected events could corrupt the values gathered for
other events, maybe we should think about disabling the events too.

When they are used with a kernel containing the patch [1], following
error happens:

"perf_event_open failed with Invalid argument
Caught runtime error while setting up counters
Internal Error.  Perf event setup failed."

I am speaking about the following events:

mem_uops_retired
mem_load_uops_retired
mem_load_uops_llc_hit_retired
mem_load_uops_llc_miss_retired

What do you think?

Michael


[1] 741a698f420c34c458294a6accecfbad702a7c52 ;
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git/commit/?id=741a698f420c34c458294a6accecfbad702a7c52

[2] page 48
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/specification-updates/3rd-gen-core-desktop-specification-update.pdf



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