mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills

pgo

Profile-guided optimisation skill for C/C++ with GCC and Clang.

Zobacz źródło

Jak używać

  1. Skopiuj polecenie instalacji i sprawdź źródła przed instalacją we własnym środowisku agenta.
  2. W oryginale sprawdź wymagane narzędzia, dane dostępowe i obsługiwane środowiska.
  3. Opisz dane wejściowe i oczekiwany rezultat; porównaj wynik ze źródłami.
npx skills add https://github.com/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills --skill pgo

Przed rozpoczęciem

  • Instalacja nie obejmuje subskrypcji modelu, limitu API ani uprawnień do plików.
  • Gwiazdki i instalacje pokazują aktywność, a nie niezależny test jakości lub bezpieczeństwa.
Oryginalny dokument Skill

Treść z repozytorium z zachowaniem nagłówków, przykładów, kodu, tabel, linków i obrazów.

PGO (Profile-Guided Optimisation)

Purpose

Guide agents through the full PGO workflow: instrument build → representative workload → collect profile → optimised build, covering both GCC and Clang, plus BOLT for post-link optimisation.

Triggers

  • "How do I use PGO to speed up my binary?"
  • "What is profile-guided optimization and when should I use it?"
  • "How do I use -fprofile-generate and -fprofile-use?"
  • "My -O3 build isn't fast enough — what next?"
  • "How does BOLT differ from PGO?"
  • "How do I collect representative profile data?"

Workflow

1. When to use PGO

text
Is -O3 -march=native already applied?
  no  → apply standard optimisation first
  yes → is workload branch-heavy or has irregular call patterns?
          yes → PGO will likely help 5-30%
          no  → PGO may not help; profile first with linux-perf

PGO helps most with:

  • Large binaries with many cold/hot code paths (compilers, databases, servers)
  • Branch-heavy code where static prediction is wrong
  • Function call-heavy code where inlining decisions improve with profile data

2. GCC PGO workflow

bash
# Step 1: Build with instrumentation
gcc -O2 -fprofile-generate -fprofile-dir=./pgo-data \
    prog.c -o prog_instr

# Step 2: Run with representative workload(s)
./prog_instr < workload1.input
./prog_instr < workload2.input
# Generates .gcda files in ./pgo-data/

# Step 3: Build optimised binary using profile
gcc -O2 -fprofile-use -fprofile-dir=./pgo-data \
    -fprofile-correction \
    prog.c -o prog_pgo

-fprofile-correction: handles profile count inconsistencies from parallel or nondeterministic runs. Always include it.

3. Clang PGO workflow (IR-based, preferred)

bash
# Step 1: Instrument build
clang -O2 -fprofile-instr-generate prog.c -o prog_instr

# Step 2: Run workload (generates default.profraw)
./prog_instr < workload.input
LLVM_PROFILE_FILE="prog-%p.profraw" ./prog_instr  # per-PID files for parallel runs

# Step 3: Merge raw profiles
llvm-profdata merge -output=prog.profdata *.profraw

# Step 4: Optimised build
clang -O2 -fprofile-instr-use=prog.profdata prog.c -o prog_pgo

Clang's IR PGO is more accurate than GCC's and supports SamplePGO (sampling-based, no instrumentation overhead).

4. Clang SamplePGO (sampling, no instrumentation)

bash
# Step 1: Build with frame pointers for accurate stacks
clang -O2 -fno-omit-frame-pointer prog.c -o prog

# Step 2: Sample with perf
perf record -b -e cycles:u ./prog < workload.input
perf script -F ip,brstack > perf.script  # or use perf2bolt

# Step 3: Convert perf data
llvm-profgen --binary=./prog --perf-script=perf.script \
             --output=prog.profdata

# Step 4: Optimised build
clang -O2 -fprofile-sample-use=prog.profdata prog.c -o prog_spgo

SamplePGO is ideal for production profiling without instrumentation overhead.

5. CMake integration

cmake
option(PGO_INSTRUMENT "Build with PGO instrumentation" OFF)
option(PGO_USE "Build with PGO profile data" OFF)

if(PGO_INSTRUMENT)
    add_compile_options(-fprofile-instr-generate)
    add_link_options(-fprofile-instr-generate)
endif()

if(PGO_USE)
    add_compile_options(-fprofile-instr-use=${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/prog.profdata)
    add_link_options(-fprofile-instr-use=${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/prog.profdata)
endif()

Build script:

bash
# Phase 1: instrument
cmake -S . -B build-pgo-instr -DPGO_INSTRUMENT=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build-pgo-instr -j$(nproc)

# Collect profile
./build-pgo-instr/prog < workload.input
llvm-profdata merge -output=prog.profdata *.profraw

# Phase 2: optimised
cmake -S . -B build-pgo -DPGO_USE=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build-pgo -j$(nproc)

6. BOLT (post-link binary optimisation)

BOLT reorders functions and basic blocks in the final binary based on profile data, improving instruction cache locality. Works after PGO for additional 5-15%.

bash
# Step 1: Build with relocation support
clang -O2 -Wl,--emit-relocs prog.c -o prog

# Step 2: Collect profile with perf
perf record -e cycles:u -b ./prog < workload.input
perf2bolt prog -p perf.data -o prog.fdata

# Or use instrumented BOLT
llvm-bolt prog -instrument -o prog.instr
./prog.instr < workload.input
# Generates /tmp/prof.fdata

# Step 3: Apply BOLT optimisation
llvm-bolt prog -data prog.fdata -o prog.bolt \
    -reorder-blocks=ext-tsp \
    -reorder-functions=hfsort \
    -split-functions \
    -split-all-cold \
    -dyno-stats

7. Verifying PGO impact

bash
# Compare perf of instrumented vs PGO build
perf stat ./prog_baseline < workload.input
perf stat ./prog_pgo < workload.input

# Check which functions are hot in each
perf record ./prog_pgo < workload.input
perf report --stdio | head -30

For full workflow details and Clang vs GCC profile format notes, see references/pgo-workflow.md.

Related skills

  • Use skills/compilers/gcc for GCC flag context
  • Use skills/compilers/clang for Clang PGO and SamplePGO setup
  • Use skills/profilers/linux-perf for collecting SamplePGO perf data
  • Use skills/profilers/flamegraphs to identify hot paths before applying PGO

Powiązane zadania

z tego samego repozytorium

Więcej Skills

Wszystkie Skills
mohitmishra786
Społeczność

core-dumps

Core dump analysis skill for production crash triage. Use when loading core files in GDB or LLDB, enabling core dump generation on Linux/macOS, mapping symbols with debuginfo or debuginfod, or extracting backtraces from crashes without re-running the program. Activates on queries about core files, ulimit, coredumpctl, debuginfod, crash triage, or analyzing segfaults from production binaries.

instalacje
2
GitHub Stars
267
Aktualizacja
27 cze
mohitmishra786
Społeczność

custom-allocators

Custom allocator skill for memory allocation strategies. Use when implementing pool/slab/arena allocators, tuning jemalloc/mimalloc, writing Rust GlobalAlloc, or benchmarking allocator performance. Activates on queries about jemalloc, mimalloc, tcmalloc, arena allocator, GlobalAlloc, or fragmentation.

instalacje
2
GitHub Stars
267
Aktualizacja
27 cze
mohitmishra786
Społeczność

ebpf

eBPF skill for Linux observability and networking. Use when writing eBPF programs with libbpf or bpftrace, attaching kprobes/tracepoints/XDP hooks, debugging verifier errors, working with eBPF maps, or achieving CO-RE portability across kernel versions. Activates on queries about eBPF, bpftool, bpftrace, XDP programs, libbpf, verifier errors, eBPF maps, or kernel tracing with BPF.

instalacje
2
GitHub Stars
267
Aktualizacja
27 cze
mohitmishra786
Społeczność

flamegraphs

Flamegraph generation and interpretation skill. Use when converting perf, Valgrind Callgrind, or other profiler output into SVG flamegraphs using Brendan Gregg's FlameGraph tools, or when reading flamegraphs to identify performance bottlenecks. Activates on queries about flamegraphs, stackcollapse, flamegraph.svg, identifying hot frames, wide vs tall frames, or performance visualisation.

instalacje
2
GitHub Stars
267
Aktualizacja
27 cze