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.