[prog] Performance Software

[Rick K]

Hello all,

I came across your group a little while ago (I think I was searching around for a good introduction to submitting patches) and I'm glad to see that such a group is in existence, it seems a great way to get support and feedback.

I am posting to let you know about some performance-related software targeted for Linux (user space applications).  It works on Intel IA-32 (Pentium, P4, etc) and IA-64 (Itanium) processors and uses the hardware performance counters that are present in the CPU to do the performance measurement.  Unfortunately, with the IA-32 kernel, one must patch the kernel source to gain access to the counters but the patch that is recommended is quite stable and widely-used. Based on some of the messages I've seen at your site, it seems like many of you are well-versed in kernel work so maybe it's not much of an issue.  The target application that is measured does not need to be modified, recompiled, or relinked in any way, so hopefully it is convenient to use.

At any rate, the software is called PerfSuite, and it is available under an open source license approved by the Univ. of Illinois (my employer).  You can find out more information about it at either of the following URLs: http://perfsuite.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ or http://perfsuite.sourceforge.net/

If anyone does try it out and has any comments, feedback or suggestions otherwise, they would be most welcome.

Best wishes and happy programming!

Rick