As promised, I’ve described the design of a Linux loadable kernel module that allows user-space access to the Raspberry Pi (ARM 1176) performance counters. By the way, the design of the module is not specific to Raspbian Wheezy or even the Raspberry Pi for that matter. I believe that the kernel module could be used on the new Beagleboard Black (BBB) to enable user-space counter access on its ARM Cortex-A8 processor under Linux. I just ordered a BBB and will try out the code when possible. (Assuming quick delivery!)

The kernel module alone isn’t enough to measure performance events. In fact, the kernel module doesn’t even touch the counters. It merely flips a privileged hardware bit which lets user-space programs read and write the performance counters and control register. So, I have also written a few user-space C functions to configure, clear, start and stop the performance counters. An application program just needs to call a few functions to choose the events to be measured and start counting, to stop counting, to get the raw counts, and to print the event counts.

I have uploaded the source for both the kernel module (aprof.c) and the user-space functions (rpi_pmu.h and rpi_pmu.c). In addition, there is source for some utility functions that I like to use in benchmark programs (test_common.h and test_common.c). All of this is a work in progress and I will update the source when major enhancements or changes are made.

Speaking of source, I have found a way of organizing and storing source code through WordPress. WordPress is kind of security paranoid and doesn’t allow you to upload source code or even gzip’ed TAR files. I ran into this issue when I attempted to upload a make file and WordPress wouldn’t let me do it (with complaints about potentially malicious code and so forth). WordPress does let you post source for viewing, however.

So, I’ve added a Source menu item to the main menu. I want the menu structure below the Source item to operate like a browsable code repository. The first level of items below Source are projects, like the kernel module. The next level of menu items navigate into the source belonging to a project. Each make file and source file is a separate page. The source code is displayed using the SyntaxHighligher plug-in in order to keep indentation. No other formatting or highlighting is done just to keep things simple. I could cut and paste code from these pages, so I hope you can, too!