A Hardware Counter Based Tool for Application's Performance Measurement and Analysis
Yong Che · 2004
This article introduces PTracker, a useful tool designed and implemented for Intel P6 processors running Microsoft Windows NT operating system. It utilizes hardware performance monitoring counters in modern processors to measure an application's performance data. Furthermore, it performs additional calculation to the measured data based on the target platform's architecture parameters and profiles. PTracker is convenient to use in that it requires no modification to the applications' source codes and is independent of the application's programming language. It not only captures the application's signatures, but also provides more informative performance characteristics of the application, which are helpful for the understanding and tuning of the application. A case of its application in program optimization is presented.