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Efficient hardware-based nonintrusive dynamic application profiling

Authors:

Karthik Shankar,

Roman LyseckyAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Volume 10, Issue 3

Article No.: 32, Pages 1 - 22

https://doi.org/10.1145/1952522.1952525

Published: 05 May 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Application profiling—the process of monitoring an application to determine the frequency of execution within specific regions—is an essential step within the design process for many software and hardware systems. Profiling is often a critical step within hardware/software partitioning utilized to determine the critical kernels of an application. In this article, we present an innovative, nonintrusive dynamic application profiler (DAProf) capable of profiling an executing application by monitoring the application's short backward branches, function calls, and function returns. The resulting profile information provides an accurate characterization of the frequently executed loops within the application providing a breakdown of loop executions versus loop iterations per execution. DAProf achieves excellent profiling accuracy with an average accuracy of 98% for loop executions, 97% for average iterations per execution, and 95% for percentage of execution time. In addition, the presented dynamic application profiler incurs as little as 11% area overhead compared to an ARM9 microprocessor. DAProf is ideally suited for rapidly profiling software applications and dynamic optimization approaches such as dynamic hardware/software partitioning in which detailed loop execution information is needed to provide accurate performance estimates.

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Cited By

Jaswal MRoy S(2022)DynPath–Non-Intrusive Feature-Rich Hardware-Based Execution Path ProfilerIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.321871010(116069-116086)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3218710
Seo MLysecky R(2018)Non-Intrusive In-Situ Requirements Monitoring of Embedded SystemACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems10.1145/320621323:5(1-27)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3206213
Doyle NMatthews EHolland GFedorova AShannon L(2017)Performance impacts and limitations of hardware memory access trace collectionProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation & Test in Europe10.5555/3130379.3130496(506-511)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3130379.3130496
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Efficient hardware-based nonintrusive dynamic application profiling
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Measurement
    2. Metrics

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems

ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems Volume 10, Issue 3

April 2011

205 pages

ISSN:1539-9087

EISSN:1558-3465

DOI:10.1145/1952522

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 05 May 2011

Accepted: 01 November 2009

Revised: 01 March 2009

Received: 01 January 2008

Published in TECS Volume 10, Issue 3

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Cited By

Jaswal MRoy S(2022)DynPath–Non-Intrusive Feature-Rich Hardware-Based Execution Path ProfilerIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.321871010(116069-116086)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3218710
Seo MLysecky R(2018)Non-Intrusive In-Situ Requirements Monitoring of Embedded SystemACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems10.1145/320621323:5(1-27)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3206213
Doyle NMatthews EHolland GFedorova AShannon L(2017)Performance impacts and limitations of hardware memory access trace collectionProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation & Test in Europe10.5555/3130379.3130496(506-511)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3130379.3130496
Doyle NMatthews EHolland GFedorova AShannon L(2017)Performance impacts and limitations of hardware memory access trace collectionDesign, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE), 201710.23919/DATE.2017.7927041(506-511)Online publication date: Mar-2017
https://doi.org/10.23919/DATE.2017.7927041
Sargur SLysecky R(2017)Non-intrusive dynamic profiler for multicore embedded systems2017 22nd Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC)10.1109/ASPDAC.2017.7858372(500-505)Online publication date: 16-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASPDAC.2017.7858372
Song YLee Y(2014)Dynamic Analysis of Embedded Software Using Execution ReplayProceedings of the 2014 IEEE 17th International Symposium on Object/Component-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing10.1109/ISORC.2014.16(166-173)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ISORC.2014.16
Cardoso J(2012)Programming strategies for runtime adaptability7th International Workshop on Reconfigurable and Communication-Centric Systems-on-Chip (ReCoSoC)10.1109/ReCoSoC.2012.6322875(1-8)Online publication date: Jul-2012
https://doi.org/10.1109/ReCoSoC.2012.6322875
Waller JHasselbring W(2012)A comparison of the influence of different multi-core processors on the runtime overhead for application-level monitoringProceedings of the 2012 international conference on Multicore Software Engineering, Performance, and Tools10.1007/978-3-642-31202-1_5(42-53)Online publication date: 31-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-31202-1_5

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