perfex

[rkufrin@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Rick Kufrin)]

perfex:

  Machines: Platinum
  Location: /usr/apps/tools/bin
  Category: hardware performance counting

  Documentation: below

  Description:
    perfex (Mikael Pettersson, Univ. Uppsala, Sweden) is a
    command-line tool that allows gathering of hardware
    performance counter data on an unmodified IA-32 binary.
    It requires specifying codes for the native event counters
    as well as other relevant information.

  User work required: none

-------------------------------------------------------------
  NAME
       perfex - a command-line interface to x86 performance counters
 
  SYNOPSIS
       perfex [-e event] .. [-o file] command
       perfex { -i | -l | -L }
 
  DESCRIPTION
       The given command is executed; after it is complete, perfex
       prints the values of the various hardware performance counters.
 
  OPTIONS
       -e event | --event=event
               Specify an event to be counted.
               Multiple event specifiers may be given, limited by the
               number of available performance counters in the processor.
               Each event specifier is a 32-bit processor-dependent
               hexadecimal number. The order in which the events are
               specified is significant.
               The counts, together with an event description are written
               to the result file (default is stderr).
 
       -i | --info
               Instead of running a command, generate output which
               identifies the current processor and its capabilities.
 
       -l | --list
               Instead of running a command, generate output which
               identifies the current processor and its capabilities,
               and lists its countable events.
 
       -L | --long-list
               Like -l, but list the events in a more detailed format.
 
       -o file | --output=file
               Write the results to file instead of stderr.
 
  EXAMPLE
       The following commands count the number of retired instructions
       in user-mode on an Intel P6 processor:
 
       perfex -e 0x004100C0 some_program
       perfex --event=0x004100C0 some_program
 
  DEPENDENCIES
       perfex only works on Linux/x86 systems which have been modified
       to include the perfctr driver. This driver is available at
       http://www.csd.uu.se/~mikpe/linux/perfctr/.
 
  NOTES
       perfex is superficially similar to IRIX' perfex(1).
       The -a, -mp, -s, and -x options are not yet implemented.
 
 Copyright (C) 1999-2001  Mikael Pettersson