AMDGPU DC Gets "PERF_TRACE" To Help With Performance Profiling

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMDGPU DC Gets "PERF_TRACE" To Help With Performance Profiling

Published on Wednesday was the latest batch of AMDGPU DC display code changes for its eventual inclusion into the AMDGPU DRM driver for mainline past the 4.20~5.0 cycle with that feature merge window being over. The most notable change with this latest AMDGPU DC haul is a new "PERF_TRACE" addition...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU-DC-PERF-TRACE

[lucrus]

PERF_TRACE is basically a debug call to place before and after the AMDGPU specific code being tested [...] allowing the driver developers to help understand [...] but this feature isn't of any relevance to end-users

How are end users supposed to use this if it requires to edit the driver source code?

[juno]

Anyone can (re)build the kernel. I see no problem there.

Users might be able to help debugging issues that devs can't reproduce. It's no effort if they are caring for debugging and e.g. bisect already.

Apart from that, they aren't "supposed to use this". That's what the article says.

[xception]

I think it is of relevance to end-users, but it's on a longer term and much more indirect manner, because developers being able to do performance tracing on the drivers will be more effective in improving them and end-users will benefit from the improvements. I think it's an important step forward and should not be as easily dismissed.