perf counters: add support for group counters

Impact: add group counters

This patch adds the "counter groups" abstraction.

Groups of counters behave much like normal 'single' counters, with a
few semantic and behavioral extensions on top of that.

A counter group is created by creating a new counter with the open()
syscall's group-leader group_fd file descriptor parameter pointing
to another, already existing counter.

Groups of counters are scheduled in and out in one atomic group, and
they are also roundrobin-scheduled atomically.

Counters that are member of a group can also record events with an
(atomic) extended timestamp that extends to all members of the group,
if the record type is set to PERF_RECORD_GROUP.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
3 files changed