[Cbe-oss-dev] PS3 performance analysis - errors on loading cellperfctr module

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Wednesday 12 December 2007, Carl Love wrote:

> I do not believe you will get OProfile to work on the PS3.  It is my
> understanding that the PS3 processor is shipped in with the hardware
> security enabled.  The hardware security disables the reading of the
> program counter.  It is part of the hardware security features to
> prevent the reverse engineering of an application.  So, the fact that
> the hypervisor support is not there really doesn't matter.  You will
> need a PS3 system that does not have the hardware disabled.

You may be confusing this with the isolated mode of the SPUs. Linux
on the PS3 does not use the isolated mode, so you can read the program
counter just like you can on any other system.

The debug bus may also be disabled on the PS3, which means that you
can't use the same method of accessing the performance counters that
we use on the blade, but you should still be able to use the
performance monitor registers by using hypercalls.

	Arnd <><