tracing: add the v2 shared-ring chunk protocol

Add the producer-local shared ring used by tracing v2. This change contains
the shared-memory ABI, one writer per TraceWriter, the single reader, and the
protocol tests. SDK and service wiring follow in separate changes.

- Define a 64-byte ring header:
  - an always-lock-free atomic64 packs write_pos in the high half and read_pos
    in the low half;
  - num_writers_waiting avoids a wake syscall when no writer is asleep;
  - a zero-filled mapping is a valid empty ring.

- Define one atomic32 state word at the start of each chunk:
  - Free(wrap) exposes the chunk to one ring traversal;
  - BeingWritten identifies the writer and its published fragment prefix;
  - Complete says the writer has finished touching the chunk, although it may
    take the chunk back to append more fragments;
  - RewriteRequested says the reader took the published prefix and the writer
    must move any newer suffix;
  - RewriteAcknowledged says the writer released the old chunk and the reader
    may return it to Free.

- Reserve uint32 positions in FIFO order and map them onto a power-of-two
  number of physical chunks. Free carries a 16-bit wrap count so a delayed
  writer cannot claim the same chunk during a later traversal.

- Keep ownership rules local to the chunk word:
  - one reservation permits one exact claim attempt;
  - only the reader writes Free;
  - the reader never waits for a writer;
  - a lost reader CAS leaves read_pos unchanged and retries the position in a
    later drain.

- Store target BufferID after the state word. Payload fragments grow towards
  higher addresses while their sizes grow down from the end of the chunk as
  shortest-form protobuf varints. Fragment counts publish an append-only
  prefix. If the reader reaches an active writer, it copies that prefix and
  asks the writer to move only the unpublished suffix.

- Keep the initial 256-byte minimum chunk size and require a four-byte-aligned
  chunk stride. Check ring geometry and allocation arithmetic before mapping
  memory. Require atomic32 and atomic64 to be always lock-free.

- Honor BufferExhaustedPolicy in SharedRingBufferWriter. Linux and Android
  writers can wait on the read_pos half of rw_positions with a futex. Other
  platforms report that blocking is unavailable instead of spinning. The
  waiter hint and its seq_cst fence pair prevent a missed wake across the two
  atomic words.

- Test ABI encoding, position and wrap rollover, malformed chunk input, every
  state transition, failed claims, prefix copying, suffix relocation, futex
  wake races, and concurrent multi-writer stress.

Bug: 536851377
15 files changed
tree: 45fa5f21be970281fd6598fb132b54701a619b8e
  1. .github/
  2. ai/
  3. bazel/
  4. build_overrides/
  5. buildtools/
  6. contrib/
  7. docs/
  8. examples/
  9. gn/
  10. include/
  11. infra/
  12. protos/
  13. python/
  14. sdk/
  15. src/
  16. test/
  17. third_party/
  18. tools/
  19. ui/
  20. .bazelignore
  21. .bazelrc
  22. .bazelversion
  23. .clang-format
  24. .clang-tidy
  25. .git-blame-ignore-revs
  26. .gitallowed
  27. .gitattributes
  28. .gitignore
  29. .gn
  30. .style.yapf
  31. Android.bp
  32. Android.bp.extras
  33. BUILD
  34. BUILD.extras
  35. BUILD.gn
  36. CHANGELOG
  37. CONTRIBUTORS.txt
  38. DIR_METADATA
  39. heapprofd.rc
  40. LICENSE
  41. meson.build
  42. METADATA
  43. MODULE.bazel
  44. MODULE.bazel.lock
  45. MODULE_LICENSE_APACHE2
  46. OWNERS
  47. OWNERS.github
  48. perfetto.rc
  49. perfetto_flags.aconfig
  50. PerfettoIntegrationTests.xml
  51. persistent_cfg.pbtxt
  52. README.chromium
  53. README.md
  54. TEST_MAPPING
  55. traced_perf.rc
  56. WORKSPACE
README.md

Perfetto - System profiling, app tracing and trace analysis

Perfetto is an open-source suite of SDKs, daemons and tools which use tracing to help developers understand the behaviour of complex systems and root-cause functional and performance issues on client and embedded systems.

It is a production-grade tool that is the default tracing system for the Android operating system and the Chromium browser.

Core Components

Perfetto is not a single tool, but a collection of components that work together:

  • High-performance tracing daemons: For capturing tracing information from many processes on a single machine into a unified trace file.
  • Low-overhead tracing SDK: A C++17 library for direct userspace-to-userspace tracing of timings and state changes in your application.
  • Extensive OS-level probes: For capturing system-wide context on Android and Linux (e.g. scheduling states, CPU frequencies, memory profiling, callstack sampling).
  • Browser-based UI: A powerful, fully local UI for visualizing and exploring large, multi-GB traces on a timeline. It works in all major browsers, requires no installation, and can open traces from other tools.
  • SQL-based analysis library: A powerful engine that allows you to programmatically query traces using SQL to automate analysis and extract custom metrics.

Why Use Perfetto?

Perfetto was designed to be a versatile and powerful tracing system for a wide range of use cases.

  • For Android App & Platform Developers: Debug and root-cause functional and performance issues like slow startups, dropped frames (jank), animation glitches, low memory kills, and ANRs. Profile both Java/Kotlin and native C++ memory usage with heap dumps and profiles.
  • For C/C++ Developers (Linux, macOS, Windows): Use the Tracing SDK to instrument your application with custom trace points to understand its execution flow, find performance bottlenecks, and debug complex behavior. On Linux, you can also perform detailed CPU and native heap profiling.
  • For Linux Kernel & System Developers: Get deep insights into kernel behavior. Perfetto acts as an efficient userspace daemon for ftrace, allowing you to visualize scheduling, syscalls, interrupts, and custom kernel tracepoints on a timeline.
  • For Chromium Developers: Perfetto is the tracing backend for chrome://tracing. Use it to debug and root-cause issues in the browser, V8, and Blink.
  • For Performance Engineers & SREs: Analyze and visualize a wide range of profiling and tracing formats, not just Perfetto's. Use the powerful SQL interface to programmatically analyze traces from tools like Linux perf, macOS Instruments, Chrome JSON traces, and more.

Getting Started

We‘ve designed our documentation to guide you to the right information as quickly as possible, whether you’re a newcomer to performance analysis or an experienced developer.

  1. New to tracing? If you're unfamiliar with concepts like tracing and profiling, start here:

  2. Ready to dive in? Our “Getting Started” guide is the main entry point for all users. It will help you find the right tutorials and documentation for your specific needs:

  3. Want the full overview? For a comprehensive look at what Perfetto is, why it's useful, and who uses it, see our main documentation page:

Debian Distribution

For users interested in the Debian distribution of Perfetto, the official source of truth and packaging efforts are maintained at Debian Perfetto Salsa Repository

Community & Support

Have questions? Need help?

We follow Google's Open Source Community Guidelines.