Applicability of this chapter to configurations:

Configuration	Implementation
CV32A60AX	Performance counters included
CV32A60X	No performance counters
CV64A6_MMU	No performance counters

CSR performance counters control

CVA6 implements performance counters according to the RISC-V Privileged Specification, version 1.11 (see Hardware Performance Monitor, Section 3.1.10). The performance counters are placed inside the Control and Status Registers(CSRs) and can be accessed with the CSRRW(I) and CSRRS/C(I) instructions.

CVA6 implements the standard 64-bit clock cycle counter mcycle, the retired instruction counter minstret as well as the six generic 64-bit event counters mhpm_counter_3 to mhpm_counter_8 including their upper 32 bits counterparts mhpm_counter_3h to mhpm_counter_8h. The corresponding event selectors mhpm_event_3 to mhpm_event_8 are implemented for the selection of the source of events. The unavailable counters (mhpm_counter_9(h) to mhpm_counter_31(h)) and event selector (mhpm_event_9 to mhpm_event_31) always read 0.

The mcountinhibit CSR is used to individually inhibit the incrementing of the counters. The read-only shadows of the counters are also implemented as cycle, instret and hpmcountern. The mcycle and minstret counters are always available but the mhpmcounter are optional and can be configured through the parameter PERF_COUNTER_EN. The supervisor and user access of performance counters are allowed through enabling of mcounteren and scounteren CSRs.

Event Selector

The event selector CSRs mhpm_event_3 to mhpm_event_8 controls which of the events are counted by the six generic event counters mhpm_counter_3 to mhpm_counter_8 respectively.

The five least significant bit(LSB) of the event selector CSRs are written to select the event that one needs to count from a particular generic event counter. Thus, we can count six different events at a time using the six generic counters.

Each of the six generic performance counters is able to monitor events from one of these sources:

Event ID	Event Name	Description
1	L1 I-Cache Misses	Number of misses in L1 I-Cache
2	L1 D-Cache Misses	Number of misses in L1 D-Cache
3	ITLB Misses	Number of misses in ITLB
4	DTLB Misses	Number of misses in DTLB
5	Load Accesses	Number of data memory loads
6	Store Accesses	Number of data memory stores
7	Exceptions	Valid Exceptions encountered
8	Exception Handler Returns	Return from an exception
9	Branch Instructions	Number of branch instructions encountered
10	Branch Mispredicts	Number of branch mispredictions
11	Branch Exceptions	Number of valid branch exceptions
12	Call	Number of call instructions
13	Return	Number of return instructions
14	MSB Full	Scoreboard is full
15	Instruction Fetch Empty	Number of invalid instructions in IF
16	L1 I-Cache Accesses	Number of accesses to Instruction Cache
17	L1 D-Cache Accesses	Number of accesses to Data Cache
18	L1 Cache Line Eviction	Number of Data Cache line eviction
19	ITLB Flush	Number of ITLB Flushes
20	Integer Instructions	Number of Integer instructions
21	Floating Point Instructions	Number of Floating point instructions
22	Pipeline Stall	Number of cycles the pipeline is stalled during read operands
23-31	Reserved	Reserved

Controlling the counters from software

All performance counters are enabled after reset. The mcountinhibit CSR at address 0x320 controls which of the performance counters increment as described in the RISC-V Privileged Specification, version 1.11 (see Machine Counter-Inhibit CSR, Section 3.1.12). For instance, bit 0 is set to 0 for mcycle(h) to increment as usual, bit 2 for minstrert(h) and bit X for event counter mhpmcounterX(h).

The lower 32 bits of all counters can be accessed through the base register, whereas the upper 32 bits are accessed through the h-register.