In the well-known hardware counter list, the first field (for example, cycles) gives the alias name that can be used in the -h counter... argument of the collect command. This alias name is also the identifier to use in the er_print command.
The second field lists the available registers for the counter; for example, [/{0|1}]. For well-known counters, the default value has been chosen to provide a reasonable sample rate. Because actual rates vary considerably, you might need to specify a non-default value.
The third field, for example, 9999991, is the default overflow value for the counter.
The fourth field, in parentheses, contains type information. It provides a short description (for example, CPU Cycles), the raw hardware counter name (for example, Cycle_cnt), and the type of units being counted (for example, CPU-cycles), which can include up to two words.
If the first word of type information is:
load, store, or load-store, the counter is memory-related. You can prepend a + sign to the counter name (for example, +dcrm) in the collect -h command, to request a search for the precise instruction and virtual address that caused the event. The + sign also enables dataspace profiling; see The DataObjects Tab, The DataLayout Tab, and The MemoryObjects Tabs for details.
not-program-related, the counter captures events initiated by some other program, such as CPU-to-CPU cache snoops. Using the counter for profiling generates a warning and profiling does not record a call stack.
If the second or only word of the type information is:
CPU-cycles, the counter can be used to provide a time-based metric. The metrics reported for such counters are converted by default to inclusive and exclusive times, but can optionally be shown as event counts.
events, the metric is inclusive and exclusive event counts, and cannot be converted to a time.
In the well-known hardware counter list in the example, the type information contains one word, CPU-cycles for the first counter and events for the second counter. For the third counter, the type information contains two words, load events.