RE: [RFC PATCH 0/5] Introduce mempool object new debug capabilities

["Morten Brørup" <mb@smartsharesystems.com>]

> From: Stephen Hemminger [mailto:stephen@networkplumber.org]
> Sent: Monday, 16 June 2025 17.30
> 
> On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 10:29:05 +0300
> Shani Peretz <shperetz@nvidia.com> wrote:
> 
> > This feature is designed to monitor the lifecycle of mempool objects
> > as they move between the application and the PMD.
> >
> > It will allow us to track the operations and transitions of each mempool
> > object throughout the system, helping in debugging and understanding objects
> flow.
> >
> > The implementation include several key components:
> > 1. Added a bitmap to mempool's header (rte_mempool_objhdr)
> >    that represent the operations history.
> > 2. Added functions that allow marking operations on an
> >    mempool objects.
> > 3. Dumps the history to a file or the console
> >    (rte_mempool_objects_dump).
> > 4. Added python script that can parse, analyze the data and
> >    present it in an human readable format.
> > 5. Added compilation flag to enable the feature.
> >
> > Shani Peretz (5):
> >   mempool: record mempool objects operations history
> >   drivers: add mempool history compilation flag
> >   net/mlx5: mark an operation in mempool object's history
> >   app/testpmd: add testpmd command to dump mempool history
> >   usertool: add a script to parse mempool history dump
> >
> 
> Could this not already be done with tracing infrastructure?

I agree with Stephen on this.

And, if you plan to use this for performance measurements, you can use the coming PMU trace to trace the objects' movements between CPU caches and RAM, so you can discriminate between hot and cold objects.