title: Performance Overhead of Perf Event Subsystem in Linux Kernel
body: <p>Performance counters for Linux are a new kernel-based subsystem that provide a framework for all things performance analysis. It covers hardware level (CPU/PMU, Performance Monitoring Unit) features and software features (software counters, tracepoints) as well. 
  Since 2.6.33, the kernel provide 'perf_event_create_kernel_counter' kernel api for developers to create kernel counter to collect system runtime information. What I concern most is the performance impact on overall system when tracepoint/ftrace is enabled. There are no docs I can find about them. I was once told that ftrace was implemented by dynamically patching code, will it slow the system dramatically?</p>