Page Contents:

• Why does my software run so slow and/or use so much memory when run with Intel® Thread Checker?
• About Workload Reduction: What does workload reduction mean?
• About Workload Reduction: What kind of workload reduction should I use?

Why does my software run so slow and/or use so much memory when run with Intel® Thread Checker?
Intel® Thread Checker uses dynamic analysis as your threading software executes. As your software runs, Thread Checker uses instrumentation to monitor each thread, including the threading APIs used and memory accesses. Therefore Thread Checker uses more memory due to the instrumentation and significantly slows down the execution of any software.

For this reason, it is critical to reduce the workload of your software before running it under Thread Checker. Reducing the workload may speed up analysis of the software and may reduce the memory used.

About Workload Reduction: What does workload reduction mean?
This is a reduction in the amount of work your program performs. It might include reducing the amount of data your program processes and/or reducing the amount of processing your program performs on each piece of data.

Some examples of work-load reduction include:

• Processing a 32x24 pixel image instead of a 1920x1440 pixel image. If there is a threading error within the loops that process the image, it does not provide you with any more information to find the same error thousands or millions of times. Finding a threading error a few (tens or hundreds) times is sufficient and makes you more productive.
  
  
• Minimize the number of times you process each piece of data by reducing the loop iterations. Your software does not need a lot of accuracy when run under Intel® Thread Checker. After all, the goal is to find threading errors and not to get accurate results.
  
  
• Minimize the update rates and/or length. Try using only one second of video, or reduce the update rate of the display to once per second instead of thirty or more updates a second.

About Workload Reduction: What kind of workload reduction should I use?
You should use as much workload reduction as possible while still being sure that you're executing the code that you want checked. Intel® Thread Checker uses dynamic analysis when executing your software. If section of your code is not executed, Thread Checker cannot give you diagnostics about the not-executed code. Where possible, you should try using multiple short runs over different code paths.

This product already contains the Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer Patch for Intel® Pentium® Processor Extreme Edition and Intel® Pentium® D Processor (vpa_7.2_ppl.zip). Installing any patch that requires manual copying of files regardless of version number, could potentially overwrite newer versions of these files. Please contact customer support if you wish to install a patch that requires manual file copying.

The binary instrumentation technology used by the Intel® Thread Checker can because some applications to change behavior or terminate abnormally. In this case, you may be able to complete the analysis after lowering the instrumentation levels of problematic modules.

The Intel Thread Checker does not detect threading errors for threads and synchronization objects shared across processes (executables).

The Intel Thread Checker cannot analyze processes that are already running. You must either specify the executable as the application to launch, or specify it as a module of interest and then launch it manually when prompted.

The Intel Thread checker support analysis of only native binaries and does not support intermediate executable representations intended for managed runtime environments.

Source and binary instrumentation of 64-bit applications on processors supporting Intel® EM64T is not supported by this release.

If an application has data race on a global variable, the definition information of the variable will not be available.

The Intel Thread Checker ignores the duration setting in any of the Activity configuration dialogs.

This release does not support Unicode file names.

Use of Stop, Pause/Resume or Cancel to terminate instrumentation or data collection before it completes may cause the VTune™ environment to become unresponsive especially when using the Linux* Remote Agent.

Although Get Tuning Advice (F8 or View menu) may appear to be available when viewing Intel Thread Checker results, it should not be used as it has been found to cause the VTune environment to crash in certain instances.

Linux* RDC is no longer part of the Windows product. Linux* RDC may be available for legacy usage. Contact customer support for more information.

While upgrading from earlier versions, please use the license file rather than the serial number.

If you are using counted FLEXlm* license files during the installation of the client applications, please make sure that either the FLEXlm* server is not running or the FLEXlm* server is running with the complete license files which are used during the installation process.

If you are interested in profiling an OpenMP* application in Intel® Thread Profiler outside the VTune™ Performance Environment, please set the KMP_FOR_TPROFILE environment variable.

Data and results from previous versions of Intel Thread Profiler can still be displayed in Intel® Thread Profiler for Windows* 3.0. However, projects from previous versions of Intel Thread Profiler can not be modified and re-run within this 3.0 release. A new project must be created to obtain new results with this release.

This release may give incorrect data in the Profile view when double clicking on a bar if there are multiple activity results in the same view. To avoid this problem, please select at least one bar from each activity result before filtering from the context menu. Applying more than one filter will lead to incorrect data in profile view

This product already contains the VTune™ Performance Analyzer Patch for Intel® Pentium® Processor Extreme Edition and Intel® Pentium® D Processor (vpa_7.2_pp1.zip). Installing any patch, which requires manual copying of files regardless of version number, could potentially overwrite newer versions of these files.

Intel Thread Profiler cannot analyze processes that are already running. You must either specify the executable as the application to launch, or specify it as a module of interest and then launch it manually when prompted.

This release of Thread Profiler supports analysis of native binaries and does not support intermediate executable representations intended for managed runtime environments.

When opening sampling results from the Timeline view, the sampling consumer may show multiple threads for each OS thread. The work-around is to open the sampling results directly (from the Tuning Browser) at least once before opening sampling results from the Timeline view.

If you analyze optimized code, the call site information may be incomplete. In particular, the top layers of your call stack may be missing.

This release does not support Unicode file names.

This release does not support inter-process performance profiling.

Thread Profiler ignores the duration setting in any of the activity configuration dialogs.

After uninstalling Thread Profiler, the standard project wizards may not appear in the New Project dialog. In this case, restar t the VTune(TM) environment to restore the standard project wizards.

After installing Thread Profiler, a known issue may cause the VTune(TM) environment to crash when closed while a Sampling Over Time view is open.

The binary instrumentation technology used by the Thread Profiler can cause some applications to change behavior or terminate abnormally. In this case, you may be able to complete the analysis after lowering the instrumentation levels of the problematic modules.

By default, the Critical Path will be generated for the entire runtime of the application. If you are interested in analyzing the performance of a specific task, locate the end of the task in the Timeline view and right click on it. Then select the Change Critical Path Target option.

When using Thread Profiler to analyze applications on systems with more than 32 processors, the overhead may become excessive. If you experience excessive overhead, please contact Technical Support.

If you have integrated the VTune analyzer into Microsoft* Visual Studio* 2005 on systems running Windows* 2003 Server SP1, some of the links in the on-line Help may not work properly and a warning message may appear. To correct this problem, adjust the Security settings for Microsoft* Internet Explorer as follows:

1. In Microsoft* Internet Explorer, click Tools » Internet Options.
2. Click the Security tab.
3. Click the Custom Level button.
4. Scroll down to the Miscellaneous section.
5. Scroll down to the "Web sites in less privileged web content zone can navigate into this zone" item and select the Prompt Radio button.
6. Click OK.

When opening help topics that contain a Related Topics button link, you may see an Internet Explorer* warning message that reads: "An ActiveX control on this page might be unsafe to interact with other parts of the page. Do you want to allow this interaction?" You can safely click Yes to continue. This problem occurs due to registry errors caused by installing a Windows* SP. To avoid seeing the warning, you can reregister the HTML Help ActiveX control. To do this, execute the following two commands:

regsvr32 /u %windir%system32hhctrl.ocx

regsvr32 %windir%system32hhctrl.ocx

Microsoft Windows* Analysis

If you experience problems loading Pack and Go files (.vxp) in the Microsoft Visual Studio* environment after installing the Intel® C++ Compiler for Windows* or Intel® Fortran Compiler for Windows* (versions 8.1 or higher), you can alternatively open Pack and Go files in the VTune environment.

When using Thread Profiler from within the Microsoft Visual Studio* environment, the Cancel Activity and Stop Activity commands will not shut down the process under analysis as expected.

When using Thread Profiler from within the Microsoft Visual Studio* environment, some output messages may not be generated.

If you use Microsoft* Visual Studio* 2005 or Intel® C++ Compiler for Windows* 9.1 or Intel® Visual Fortran Compiler for Windows* 9.1 integrated into Microsoft* Visual Studio* 2005 you should not remove the manifest file as it contains important information that is required for any application which is building using the VS Studi o 2005 infrastructure. If you remove manifest file then your application will not run and will not get Intel® Thread Profiler results.

The first time an Intel® Thread Profiler 1.0 project is opened with Intel® Thread Profiler 2.0 or higher, you may see a warning dialog which states: "The following were present when this file was created but are not currently present: Intel Thread Profiler. There may be unexpected failures if you proceed." If this dialog appears, click Yes to proceed as no failures should occur.

Microsoft Windows* OpenMP* Analysis

• Although Get Tuning Advice (F8 or View menu) may appear to be available when viewing Intel Thread Profiler results, it should not be used because it may cause the VTune environment to become unstable.
• The counts of atomic and flush directives may be wrong in the Data Editor view.
• This version does not support detailed results for OpenMP* nested parallel regions.

Microsoft Windows* Threading API Analysis

• For a call site that corresponds to a thread termination which was done via an implicit or explicit "return", for example, not via an API call like ExitThread(), the Source View display will point to the start of the thread procedure instead of the precise point of the return call.