man/man8/llcstat.8

.TH llcstat 8  "2015-08-18" "USER COMMANDS"
.SH NAME
llcstat \- Summarize CPU cache references and misses by process. Uses Linux eBPF/bcc.
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B llcstat [\-h] [\-c SAMPLE_PERIOD] [duration]
.SH DESCRIPTION
llcstat instruments CPU cache references and cache misses system-side, and
summarizes them by PID and CPU. These events have different meanings on
different architecture. For x86-64, they mean misses and references to LLC.
This can be useful to locate and debug performance issues
caused by cache hit rate.

This works by sampling corresponding events defined in uapi/linux/perf_event.h,
namely PERF_COUNT_HW_CACHE_REFERENCES and PERF_COUNT_HW_CACHE_MISSES, using
BPF perf event tracing. Upon each sampled event, the attached BPF program
records the PID and CPU ID on which the event happened, and stores it in table.

This makes use of a Linux 4.9 feature (BPF_PROG_TYPE_PERF_EVENT).

Since this uses BPF, only the root user can use this tool.
.SH REQUIREMENTS
CONFIG_BPF and bcc.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\-h
Print usage message.
.TP
\-c SAMPLE_PERIOD
Sample one in this many cache reference and cache miss events.
.TP
duration
Duration to trace, in seconds.
.SH EXAMPLES
.TP
Sample one in 100 events, trace for 20 seconds:
#
.B llcstat -c 100 20
.SH FIELDS
.TP
PID
Process ID
.TP
NAME
Process name
.TP
CPU
CPU ID
.TP
REFERENCE
Number of cache reference events
.TP
MISS
Number of cache miss events
.TP
HIT%
Cache hit ratio
.SH SOURCE
This is from bcc.
.IP
https://github.com/iovisor/bcc
.PP
Also look in the bcc distribution for a companion _examples.txt file containing
example usage, output, and commentary for this tool.
.SH OS
Linux
.SH STABILITY
Unstable - in development.
.SH AUTHOR
Teng Qin
.SH SEE ALSO
.TP
Perf can be used as a generic event counter tool. An example for LLC:
#
.B perf top -e cache-misses -e cache-references -a -ns pid,cpu,comm