SPE Prerequisites

The Arm Statistical Profiling Extension (SPE) is an optional feature in ARMv8.2 and is present in CPUs, such as the Neoverse N1 and V1. In addition, using this Arm® MAP feature has the following prerequisites:

• Use Linux kernel 5.12 or later to support detecting SVE predicate events. Non-SVE events only require 4.16 or later. To confirm that basic support is available, check for the path /sys/bus/event_source/devices/arm_spe_XX.
• For kernel versions 4.20 to 5.1-RC5, apply the patch at http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel//06760.html.
• Disable kernel page table isolation for the target. To ensure that kernel page table isolation is disabled, boot the machine with the command-line argument kpti=off.