@@ -330,3 +330,54 @@ Details on how to use the generic STM API can be found here [2].
[1]. Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-coresight-devices-stm
[2]. Documentation/trace/stm.txt
+
+
+Using perf tools
+----------------
+
+perf can be used to record and analyze trace of programs.
+
+Execution can be recorded using 'perf record' with the cs_etm event,
+specifying the name of the sink to record to, e.g:
+
+ perf record -e cs_etm/@20070000.etr/u --per-thread
+
+The 'perf report' and 'perf script' commands can be used to analyze execution,
+synthesizing instruction and branch events from the instruction trace.
+'perf inject' can be used to replace the trace data with the synthesized events.
+The --itrace option controls the type and frequency of synthesized events
+(see perf documentation).
+
+Note that only 64-bit programs are currently supported - further work is
+required to support instruction decode of 32-bit Arm programs.
+
+
+Generating coverage files for Feedback Directed Optimization: AutoFDO
+---------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+'perf inject' accepts the --itrace option in which case tracing data is
+removed and replaced with the synthesized events. e.g.
+
+ perf inject --itrace --strip -i perf.data -o perf.data.new
+
+Below is an example of using ARM ETM for autoFDO. It requires autofdo
+(https://github.com/google/autofdo) and gcc version 5. The bubble
+sort example is from the AutoFDO tutorial (https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/AutoFDO/Tutorial).
+
+ $ gcc-5 -O3 sort.c -o sort
+ $ taskset -c 2 ./sort
+ Bubble sorting array of 30000 elements
+ 5910 ms
+
+ $ perf record -e cs_etm/@20070000.etr/u --per-thread taskset -c 2 ./sort
+ Bubble sorting array of 30000 elements
+ 12543 ms
+ [ perf record: Woken up 35 times to write data ]
+ [ perf record: Captured and wrote 69.640 MB perf.data ]
+
+ $ perf inject -i perf.data -o inj.data --itrace=il64 --strip
+ $ create_gcov --binary=./sort --profile=inj.data --gcov=sort.gcov -gcov_version=1
+ $ gcc-5 -O3 -fauto-profile=sort.gcov sort.c -o sort_autofdo
+ $ taskset -c 2 ./sort_autofdo
+ Bubble sorting array of 30000 elements
+ 5806 ms