Before You Begin

This manual describes the performance analysis tools that are available with the Forte Developer 7 product.

• The Collector and Performance Analyzer are a pair of tools that perform statistical profiling of a wide range of performance data and tracing of various system calls, and relate the data to program structure at the function, source line and instruction level.
• prof and gprof are tools that perform statistical profiling of CPU usage and provide execution frequencies at the function level.
• tcov is a tool that provides execution frequencies at the function and source line levels.

This manual is intended for application developers with a working knowledge of Fortran, C, C++, or Java, the Solaris operating environment, and UNIX^® operating system commands. Some knowledge of performance analysis is helpful but is not required to use the tools.

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How This Book Is Organized

Chapter 1 introduces the performance analysis tools, briefly discussing what they do and when to use them.

Chapter 2 is a tutorial that demonstrates how to use the Collector and Performance Analyzer to assess the performance of four example programs.

Chapter 3 describes the data collected by the Collector and how the data is converted into metrics of performance.

Chapter 4 describes how to use the Collector to collect timing data, synchronization delay data, and hardware event data from your program.

Chapter 5 describes the features of the Performance Analyzer graphical user interface. Note: you must have a license to use the Performance Analyzer.

Chapter 6 describes how to use the er_print command line interface to analyze the data collected by the Collector.

Chapter 7 describes the process of converting the data collected by the Sampling Collector into performance metrics and how the metrics are related to program structure.

Chapter 8 presents information on the utilities that are provided for manipulating and converting performance experiments and viewing annotated source code and disassembly code without running an experiment.

Appendix A describes the UNIX profiling tools prof, gprof, and tcov. These tools provide timing information and execution frequency statistics.

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Typographic Conventions

TABLE P-1 Typeface Conventions

Typeface	Meaning	Examples
AaBbCc123	The names of commands, files, and directories; on-screen computer output	Edit your .login file. Use ls -a to list all files. % You have mail.
AaBbCc123	What you type, when contrasted with on-screen computer output	% su Password:
AaBbCc123	Book titles, new words or terms, words to be emphasized	Read Chapter 6 in the User's Guide. These are called class options. You must be superuser to do this.
AaBbCc123	Command-line placeholder text; replace with a real name or value	To delete a file, type rm filename.

TABLE P-2 Code Conventions

Code Symbol	Meaning	Notation	Code Example
[ ]	Brackets contain arguments that are optional.	O[n]	O4, O
{ }	Braces contain a set of choices for required option.	d{y|n}	dy
|	The "pipe" or "bar" symbol separates arguments, only one of which may be chosen.	B{dynamic|static}	Bstatic
:	The colon, like the comma, is sometimes used to separate arguments.	Rdir[:dir]	R/local/libs:/U/a
...	The ellipsis indicates omission in a series.	xinline=f1[,...fn]	xinline=alpha,dos

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Shell Prompts

Shell	Prompt
C shell	%
Bourne shell and Korn shell	$
C shell, Bourne shell, and Korn shell superuser	#

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Accessing Forte Developer Development Tools and Man Pages

The Forte Developer product components and man pages are not installed into the standard /usr/bin/ and /usr/share/man directories. To access the Forte Developer compilers and tools, you must have the Forte Developer component directory in your PATH environment variable. To access the Forte Developer man pages, you must have the Forte Developer man page directory in your MANPATH environment variable.

For more information about the PATH variable, see the csh(1), sh(1), and ksh(1) man pages. For more information about the MANPATH variable, see the man(1) man page. For more information about setting your PATH and MANPATH variables to access this Forte Developer release, see the installation guide or your system administrator.

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Note - The information in this section assumes that your Forte Developer products are installed in the /opt directory. If your product software is not installed in the /opt directory, ask your system administrator for the equivalent path on your system.

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Accessing Forte Developer Compilers and Tools

Use the steps below to determine whether you need to change your PATH variable to access the Forte Developer compilers and tools.

To Determine Whether You Need to Set Your PATH Environment Variable

1. Display the current value of the PATH variable by typing the following at a command prompt: