Processing events during profiling of an instrumented program

US6728955B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• International Business Machines Corporation · US

Inventors

• Robert Francis Berry · Austin, US
• John Day Howard · Austin, US
• Chester Charles John, Jr. · Round Rock, US
• Frank Eliot Levine · Austin, US
• Donald Mulvey · Round Rock, US
• Enio Manuel Pineda · Austin, US
• Robert John Urquhart · Austin, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Nov 5, 1999
• Grant date: Apr 27, 2004
• Expiry date: Nov 5, 2019

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F2201/88
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A user may specify a vector of metrics to be used while profiling a program. The vector of metrics may optionally be thread-relative. In response to a notification of an occurrence of the current event, a thread-relative elapsed metric is computed by: determining a current thread; retrieving a stored reference metric for the preceding event of the current thread; obtaining a current reference metric; and computing the thread-relative elapsed metric as a difference between the current reference metric and the stored reference metric. In order to prevent the generation of redundant metric information, the information associated with the vector of metrics maybe placed into the trace records in several different space-saving formats.