Profiling (computer programming): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:59, 4 February 2014

Revision as of 00:00, 5 February 2014

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Performance-analysis tools existed on [[IBM/360]] and [[IBM/370]] platforms from the early 1970s, usually based on timer interrupts which recorded the [[Program status word]] (PSW) at set timer-intervals to detect "hot spots" in executing code.{{cn}} This was an early example of [[Sampling (statistics)|sampling]] (see below). In early 1974 [[Instruction Set Simulator | instruction-set simulator]]s permitted full trace and other performance-monitoring features.{{cn}}

Profiler-driven program analysis on Unix dates back to at least 1979,{{cn}} when Unix systems included a basic tool, <code>prof</code>, which listed each function and how much of program execution time it used. In 1982 <code>gprof</code> extended the concept to a complete [[call graph]] analysis.<ref name="gprof">

S.L. Graham, P.B. Kessler, and M.K. McKusick, [http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/psd/18.gprof/paper.pdf ''gprof: a Call Graph Execution Profiler''], Proceedings of the SIGPLAN '82 Symposium on Compiler Construction, SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 17, No 6, pp. 120-126; [[doi:10.1145/800230.806987]]</ref>