Chapter 44
OProfile
44.1 Introduction
OProfile is a system-wide profiler for Linux systems, capable of profiling all running
code at low overhead.
OProfile is released under the GNU GPL. It consists of a kernel driver, a daemon for
collecting sample data, and several post-profiling tools for turning data into information.
44.1.1 Overview
OProfile leverages the hardware performance counters of the CPU to enable profiling of
a wide variety of interesting statistics, which can also be used for basic time-spent
profiling.
All code is profiled: hardware and software interrupt handlers, kernel modules, the
kernel, shared libraries, and applications.
44.1.2 Features
OProfile has the following features.
• Unobtrusive-No special recompilations or wrapper libraries are necessary. Even
debug symbols (-g option to gcc) are not necessary unless users want to produce
annotated source. No kernel patch is needed; just insert the module.
• System-wide profiling-All code running on the system is profiled, enabling analysis
of system performance.
• Performance counter support-Enables collection of various low-level data and
association for particular sections of code.
• Call-graph support-With an 2.6 kernel, OProfile can provide gprof-style call-graph
profiling data.
i.MX 6Solo/6DualLite Linux Reference Manual, Rev. L3.0.35_4.1.0, 09/2013
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.
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