Using gprof to Tune the 4.2BSD Kernel
Marshall Kirk McKusick · 1998
This paper describes how the gprof profiler accounts for the running time of called routines in the running time of the routines that call them. It then explains how to configure a profiling kernel on the 4.2 Berkeley Software Distribution of UNIX ® for the VAX‡ and discusses tradeoffs in techniques for collecting profile data. Gprof identifies problems that severely affects the overall performance of the kernel. Once a potential problem areas is identified benchmark programs are devised to highlight the bottleneck. These benchmarks verify that the problem exist and provide a metric against which to validate proposed solutions. Tw o caches are added to the kernel to alleviate the bottleneck and gprof is used to validates their effectiveness. ‡ VAX is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation.