Hot spot (computer programming): Difference between revisions

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{{Other uses|Hotspot (disambiguation)#Computing}}

{{More citations needed|date=May 2009}}

{{Other uses|Hotspot#Computing}}

A '''hot spot''' in [[computer science]] is most usually defined as a region of a [[computer program]] where a high proportion of executed instructions occur or where most time is spent during the program's execution (not necessarily the same thing since some instructions are faster than others).

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==History of hot spot detection==

The [[computer science|computer scientist]] [[Donald Knuth]] described his first encounter with what he refers to as a ''jump trace'' in an interview for ''[[Dr. Dobb's Journal]]'' in 1996, saying:

<blockquote>In the '60s, someone invented the concept of a 'jump trace'. This was a way of altering the [[machine code|machine language]] of a program so it would change the next branch or [[jump instruction]] to retain control, so you could execute the program at fairly high speed instead of interpreting each instruction one at a time and record in a file just where a program diverged from sequentiality. By processing this file you could figure out where the program was spending most of its time. So the first day we had this software running, we applied it to our [[Fortran]] [[compiler]] supplied by, I suppose it was in those days, [[Control Data Corporation]]. We found out it was spending 87 percent of its time reading [[comment (computer programming)|comments]]! The reason was that it was translating from one code system into another into another.<ref>[http://www.ntg.nl/maps/16/14.pdf Jack Woehr: An interview with Donald Knuth, April 1996.]</ref></blockquote>