Re: [PATCH v2] PowerPC: Initial SFrame support for 64-bit PowerPC ELF ABI
Project / Subsystem
binutils / powerpc
Date
2026-08-12
Proposer
Indu Bhagat <ibhagatgnu@gmail.com>
Source type
public_inbox
Consensus
Proposed
Sentiment
—/10
Technical tradeoffs
- • Enables more reliable profiling by providing kernel-level SFrame support.
- • Moves away from fragile userspace heuristics for callchain unwinding.
All attributes
- project
- binutils
- subsystem
- powerpc
- patch_id
- —
- discussion_id
- 8c5f4f61-a550-47f7-b31f-719838b2d246@gmail.com
- source_type
- public_inbox
- title
- Re: [PATCH v2] PowerPC: Initial SFrame support for 64-bit PowerPC ELF ABI
- headline
- PowerPC: Initial SFrame support for 64-bit PowerPC ELF ABI
- tldr
- Discusses the need for SFrame support in PowerPC64 ELF ABI to address stale LR values and missing caller information during profiling.
- proposer
- Indu Bhagat <ibhagatgnu@gmail.com>
- consensus
- Proposed
- outcome
- proposed
- sentiment_score
- —
- technical_tradeoffs
-
- • Enables more reliable profiling by providing kernel-level SFrame support.
- • Moves away from fragile userspace heuristics for callchain unwinding.
- series_id
- —
- series_role
- reply
- series_parts
- []
- tags
-
- • powerpc
- • binutils
- • debugging
- • profiling
- • dwarf
- bugzilla_url
- —
- date
- 2026-08-12T00:00:00.000Z
Re: [PATCH v2] PowerPC: Initial SFrame support for 64-bit PowerPC ELF ABI
This discussion delves into the necessity of SFrame support for 64-bit PowerPC ELF ABI, primarily to resolve issues encountered during profiling with perf. Two key problems are highlighted: stale Link Register (LR) values at NMI boundaries and an ‘epilogue-race’ leading to missing caller information. The current reliance on fragile heuristics in perf to correct these issues is deemed insufficient, and SFrame is presented as a kernel-side solution for more reliable unwinding and frame data.