Virtual Machines and PAPI

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Marcos Horro

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May 27, 2020, 3:01:46 AM5/27/20
to ptools-perfapi
Hello all,

I was trying to set up continuous integration in my project but I am not able to execute PAPI properly within a virtual machine.
I have read about PAPI-V but most papers are from 2012, and I can not find any documentation for using it properly.
Is there a way to, at least, execute preset events in virtual machines? 
Thanks.

Kind regards,
Marcos HV

Phil Mucci

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Jun 15, 2020, 11:42:52 AM6/15/20
to Marcos Horro, ptools-perfapi
Marcos,

Lots of VM’s don’t virtualize the PMU… nearly all in fact. I believe VMware had an option to do it, but it may no longer be supported. Generally, one can use the PERF software events (like PERF_COUNT_SW_CPU_CLOCK) but that’s not really any different than using any of the normal SVR4 or POSIX timers. 

My own personal attitude is that if anyone needed performance from the metal, they weren’t running in a VM. However, this does limit using PAPI in a teaching environment. 

PAPI does work fine in containers however.

Phil


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Marcos Horro

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Jun 15, 2020, 11:55:38 AM6/15/20
to Phil Mucci, ptools-perfapi
Phil,

Basically I wanted to measure hardware counters in VMs for continuous integration reasons, I totally agree with you regarding from where to measure performance.

Will try containers then. Thank you so much.

Kind regards,

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