Monitoring program dynamics : Evaluation of software profiler effectiveness

Abstract

Program monitoring tools are often used to verify program correctness, study program performance, and identify performance bottlenecks. Program profilers are a class of program monitoring tools which aid in tuning the performance of the program. The flexibility of software profilers, compared to their hardware counterparts, makes them a more attractive option. We use concepts of accuracy and completeness to assess the effectiveness of software profilers. This thesis focuses on the methodology and effectiveness of existing software profiling mechanisms on uniprocessor systems.