On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 9:15 AM Beeman Strong <beeman@...> wrote:

Thanks guys.  It would be good to clarify this in the spec, so there is no confusion.  x86's INST_RETIRED.ALL, for instance, does increment for interrupts and exceptions.

I don't argue against a non-normative clarification, but a direct literal reading of the RV text (i.e. only completed/retired instructions are counted) leaves no ambiguity.  Taking an interrupt or an exception does not correspond to execution of any instruction in the program.  It's an interesting event, but it's not the execution and retirement of an instruction.  (Similarly, executing an instruction, causing cache/TLB misses, and causing other lasting uarch effects, but ultimately not retiring the instruction, must not be counted even though real effects with performance implications have been caused.) 

As far as adding clarification because another architecture has a different definition of something (in this case a specific perf event), this starts down a long slippery slope - across the RV arch specs - of countering people's presumptions based on x86 or ARM or MIPS or ....  Currently the RV arch specs expect people to fully read the spec and to not presume meanings or behaviors that may happen to be true in other architectures.  Other architectures take the same tack.  Conversely, in practice, there will be people that only do a quick or loose read of some arch text, don't read other related sections of the arch specs, and bring in their own interpretative presumptions.  Trying to defend against all that would ultimately result in lots and lots of clarifications. (And discussions over where to draw the line.)

Greg