Intel® Performance Tuning Utility 3.2 Update 1

Product Overview

The Intel® Performance Tuning Utility (Intel® PTU) is a powerful, cross-platform performance analysis tool set. It offers a low-overhead statistical call graph, and other traditional features such as identification of the hottest modules and functions of an application, tracking of call sequences and identification of performance-critical source code. Intel® PTU also has new, more powerful data collection, analysis, and visualization capabilities. For more experienced performance tuners, Intel® PTU offers insight into processor hardware event counters for a more detailed look into the performance of areas such as the memory system and architecture. The tool can also map your issues back to the source code. If you are analyzing an application for which you don’t have the source, Intel® PTU allows you to represent data with basic block granularity and provides a function control flow graph to navigate the disassembly. The Intel® Performance Tuning Utility is available for both Windows* and Linux*.

The Intel® Performance Tuning Utility offers:

Statistical Call Graph - Profiles with low overhead to detect where time is spent in your application
Event Based Sampling - Uses the processor’s onboard performance monitoring hardware to get a detailed look into performance issues
Basic Block Analysis - Displays hotspots with basic block granularity and generates a control flow graph for advanced analysis of application, even without the source code
Events over IP graph - Generates a histogram of performance events distributed over application code
Loop Analysis - Identifies loops and recursion in your application to aid optimization
Result difference - Compares the results of multiple runs to measure changes in performance
Data Access Profiling - Identifies memory hotspots and relates them to code hotspots
Heap Profiler - Identifies dynamic memory usage by application. Can help identify memory leaks
Instrumentation-based Call Graph, Call Count - Provides exact call graph and call count information for your application

Version 3.2 Update 1 of the Intel Performance Tuning Utility introduces the following new features:

New CPUs support: ability to recognize CPU and do basic sampling on it
New Operating Systems support
Automatic performance issues identification based on ratios
New Advanced Profile view that shows detailed information for selected hotspot and provides tuning advices
Smart default column ordering in GUI for hotspot, source, and result difference views driven by ratios
New registers view invoked from the source view
Search dialog in the source view
Event sample counts collected in multiplexed mode are now extrapolated to the total collection runtime
Improved experiment naming scheme in GUI
Multiple bug fixes and performance improvements

Last but not the least two features are Intel Core™ i7 processor specific and take advantage of its advanced PMU design:

New predefined tuning profiles: opportunity to use methodologies developed by tuning experts
Ability to show function call counts per call site from experiments collected using event-based sampling profiles

The capabilities of this utility for performance analysis are in many ways similar to that of the Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer, however this technology includes features that may be of more value to those who are more experienced with performance tuning. This utility explores some new approaches for data collection and user interface techniques. One of our goals for releasing this utility to the public, in addition to providing our customers powerful performance analysis tools, is to get feedback on what you do or don’t like. We appreciate your help which will make future versions of this utility, or other Intel software products, even better.

As the capabilities in this utility are experimental, we cannot guarantee any level of support for them. Some of the features and interface designs may find their way into released and supported products, some may not.

The current version 3.2 Update 1 of this utility is built as a plug-in to the Eclipse environment. This distribution package of Intel® PTU includes an Eclipse environment and is integrated into it.

Parallelization Made Easier with Intel® Performance Tuning Utility was published in The Intel Technology Journal. The paper explores how the Intel® Performance Tuning Utility significantly improves on the data collection and display features available and adds capabilities needed for enabling and analysis of parallel execution.

Technical Requirements

You must have a license for the Intel VTune™ Performance Analyzer product on your system. If you don't, you can acquire the commercial product or try an evaluation copy.
Please see the release notes for more details on technical requirements, including the list of supported processors and operating systems.

Screenshots

The ‘outer_loop’ function in different call branches can be the first target for parallelization. The heavy loop is detected inside the function and its caller function.

The Advanced Profile view (at the bottom) explains the highlighted issue details for the selected hot basic block in equake application.

The heaviest source line (#597) is disassembled on the right and grouped into basic blocks. Analyze the execution flow from the Flow Graph at the bottom.

The performance of the ‘calc_noise’ function is improved. The difference between two collected experiments is 39.51 msec.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q - How do I get started using the Intel® Performance Tuning Utility?

A - There are 2 things that we recommend you do before starting to use this tool. First of all, make sure that you have the Intel VTune™ Performance Analyzer product (with an unexpired support period) on your system. If you don't or aren’t sure about it, you can acquire the commercial product or try an evaluation copy. Next, make sure that you have reviewed the installation and usage guide. This guide provides a visual screenshot by screenshot display of all user interface interactions needed to invoke and effectively use Intel® PTU. This guide, along with the User Guide, helps you ensure that the installation of Intel® PTU does not inadvertently impact your usage of the VTune Performance Analyzer.

Q - Where can I get support for the use of this utility?

A - We encourage you to visit our support forums for support.

Q - What are the licensing terms that spell out how exactly I can use this utility?

A - The licensing terms are listed on the download page.

Q - Can you tell me a little more about the results difference feature of Intel(R) PTU?

A - The results difference feature is a powerful feature that allows you to see the performance difference made by either changing compiler switches using the same compiler or by changing the compiler used to generate the application. The fans of this capability have seen significant productivity gains by being able to quickly see the performance impact of compile time changes as soon as a new build is ready, which is all the more important during regression testing.

Q - Is this version backward compatible with v2.0 or v3.0? Can I view results in v3.2, collected from previous versions PTU v2.0 or v3.0?

A - Unfortunately, you may not. Moreover, you will probably need to run your analysis again with Intel® PTU v3.2 (sometimes results re-conversion may help).

Q - What is new with Intel® Performance Tuning Utility 3.2 Update 1?

A - See an appropriate section of the product release notes.

Q - Where can I read about the new Intel® Core™i7 Processor PMU features such as PEBS Improvements, Last Branch Record (LBR) Collection & Matrix Event: Offcore_Response_0

A - See Intel®Core™i7 Processor Features in Intel®Performance Tuning Utility 3.2 for detailed information.

Primary Technology Contacts

Dmitry Ryabtsev, Sr. Software Engineer

Konstantin Lupach, Sr. Software Engineer

David Levinthal, Principal Engineer

Julia Fedorova, Sr. Software Engineer

We encourage you to visit our support forums. We'll be watching for Performance Tuning Utility questions.