Subject: [Announce] version 1.0 of x86 performance counters driver

Version 1.0 of my x86 performance-monitoring counters driver for
Linux is now available at

	http://www.csd.uu.se/~mikpe/linux/perfctr/

Summary of changes since version 0.8 (announced 1999-11-14):
- Global-mode performance counters have been implemented.
  This works for both UP and SMP.
- The high-level services (virtual pre-process and global perfctrs)
  can be enabled/disabled individually via config options.
- The driver is (again) installed as a character-mode device.
  It's been assigned char major 10, minor 182, name /dev/perfctr.
- The driver can be built as a module.
- The WinChip 3 processor should now work with the driver.
- The PCE flag in %cr4 is now globally enabled while the driver
  is loaded. This is both a performance improvement and a necessity
  since kernel 2.3.40 and the new __flush_tlb_global() macro.
- The x86 drivers now sample at 32-bit precision instead of 40 or
  48 bits. This reduces sampling overhead, but doesn't affect
  correctness since we generally sample often enough that counter
  wraparound isn't an issue.
- Major code reorganisation.
- Code cleanups to facilitate future support for non-x86 processors.
- This version supports kernels 2.3.41, 2.2.15pre5, and 2.2.14.

I'm submitting this to Linus for inclusion in 2.3.x.

/ Mikael Pettersson