Workload Automation#

Workload Automation is an external framework, designed to run workloads and collect measurements on Android and Linux devices.

See ARM-software/workload-automation

Workload Automation is integrated with LISA:

  1. Installed by default in the LISA environment.

  2. WAOutput, for parsing the measurement collected during a WA run.

  3. lisa-wltest-series to run WA on multiple kernels to compare them.

Running WA from the LISA’s environment#

Once the LISA’s environment is setup, Workload Automation will be available without any further configuration.

source init_env
wa run <workload|agenda> -d output/

See the Workload Automation documentation for more informations.

WAOutput#

The output of Workload Automation can be parsed using the lisa.wa.WAOutput class. The results is a pandas.DataFrame, which can also be plotted. See the classe’s documentation for examples.

Wltest#

Wltest enables the comparison of power and performance impacts of kernel changes on Android devices. Wltest takes a list of kernel commits as input, build and flashes each one on a device, and runs a workload-automation agenda in order to collect power and performance metrics. After the execution, the results can be parsed and analyized using the ipython agenda provided in Lisa under ipynb/wltests/sched-evaluation-full.ipynb

The lisa-wltest-series --help command provides the full list of parameters for wltest.

Target types#

Wltests supports two types of targets:

  1. the standard targets, for which the build procedure is aligned with upstream (using a simple defconfig and make command);

  2. the repo targets, for which the build procedure is entirely managed by a repo containing the kernel sources, modules, toolchains and build scripts. The repo targets have WLTEST_REPO_TARGET="y" set in their definitions file.

Standard targets#

For standard targets, such as Hikey 960, the wltest workflow goes as follows:

  1. Clone the kernel sources with git clone https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/hikey-linaro

  2. Hack the kernel and commit your changes

  3. Repeat 2. as necessary

  4. Put in a ‘series’ file the list commits you want to test using the <sha1> <commit title> format as provided by git log --oneline --no-color --no-decorate

  5. Run lisa-wltest-series with -k pointed at the kernel source tree and -s pointed at the file created in 4.

Repo targets#

The kernel sources of repo targets are managed using Google’s repo tool (see https://source.android.com/setup/develop/repo). The kernel repo usually features the kernel sources, the module sources, the required toolchains, the build scripts, and potentially more.

For repo targets, such as Pixel 3, the wltest workflow goes as follows:

  1. Download the sources using repo as explained in https://source.android.com/setup/build/building-kernels#downloading

  2. Issue repo start --all <branch name> in the repo

  3. Go in the sub-trees (kernel and/or modules), hack the code, and commit your changes

  4. Repeat 2. and 3. as necessary

  5. Put in a ‘series’ files the list of repo branches you want to test

  6. Run lisa-wltest-series with -k pointed at the top level repo folder downloaded in 1., and -s pointing at the file created in 5.