nmi_watchdog: Add new, generic implementation, using perf events
This is a new generic nmi_watchdog implementation using the perf events infrastructure as suggested by Ingo. The implementation is simple, just create an in-kernel perf event and register an overflow handler to check for cpu lockups. I created a generic implementation that lives in kernel/ and the hardware specific part that for now lives in arch/x86. This approach has a number of advantages: - It simplifies the x86 PMU implementation in the long run, in that it removes the hardcoded low-level PMU implementation that was the NMI watchdog before. - It allows new NMI watchdog features to be added in a central place. - It allows other architectures to enable the NMI watchdog, as long as they have perf events (that provide NMIs) implemented. - It also allows for more graceful co-existence of existing perf events apps and the NMI watchdog - before these changes the relationship was exclusive. (The NMI watchdog will 'spend' a perf event when enabled. In later iterations we might be able to piggyback from an existing NMI event without having to allocate a hardware event for the NMI watchdog - turning this into a no-hardware-cost feature.) As for compatibility, we'll keep the old NMI watchdog code as well until the new one can 100% replace it on all CPUs, old and new alike. That might take some time as the NMI watchdog has been ported to many CPU models. I have done light testing to make sure the framework works correctly and it does. v2: Set the correct timeout values based on the old nmi watchdog Signed-off-by: Don Zickus <dzickus@redhat.com> Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Cc: gorcunov@gmail.com Cc: aris@redhat.com Cc: peterz@infradead.org LKML-Reference: <1265424425-31562-3-git-send-email-dzickus@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
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kernel/nmi_watchdog.c
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