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Intel® GPA 4 Tip: Using the New Frame Advisor and Erg Advisor Tools

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Introduction

As a game developer you want to provide a compelling user experience on every platform that you target. But this usually involves becoming an expert in knowing every little detail of a platform's GPU architecture, which is time-consuming due to a typically steep learning curve. Plus, the complexity of GPUs continues to increase with every new generation of graphics systems.

So it's no surprise that the Intel GPA team hears feedback from users similar to the following: "You've given me lots of metrics data that shows what's happening deep within the GPU and the individual stages of the rendering pipeline. But how do I sort through all of this data and figure out how to use it to improve my game's performance?"

To help answer these questions, Intel® GPA 4.3 has added two new "advisors" -- Frame Advisor and Erg Advisor. In a nutshell, each of these tools is an expert system that helps you find problems in your frames. Intel® GPA Frame Analyzer already provides a lot of metrics data, but these advisors can automatically sift through this data and highlight potential areas of concern. The advisors uses "investigations" to find these issues -- each investigation is a plug-in designed to look for a particular kind of problem.

Tools Overview

First, there are two advisors: Erg Advisor and Frame Advisor. They look and behave similarly, but with several important differences:

	Erg Advisor	Frame Advisor
Available Investigations	Findings relevant to individual ergs	Findings relevant to the frame in general
What is shown	Findings across investigations for the currently selected ergs	Findings for all ergs, regardless of the current selection
What is displayed	Investigations that have found something for the current selection	All investigations regardless of whether something was found or not
Accessing the tool	Accessed via the tab group, and behaves in an erg-centric fashion, much like the other tabs	Accessed from the Intel GPA Frame Analyzer menu

Both tools also include hyperlinks in some of the investigations -- depending upon the specific investigation, these links will help you access the supporting data more quickly.

The Erg Advisor Tool

As mentioned before, the Erg Advisor is erg-based (hence its name!). To get started:

Open the "Erg Advisor" tab.
Select one or more ergs that you want to analyze.

Once ergs are selected, investigations appear (four are available in this example), and can be selected to see the details of the investigations in the lower portion of the window (here we've selected "Rejected Pixels" and sorted the results by "Raw Values", the default):

But sometimes it's more useful to view the results sorted by some other weighting that's more meaningful to you. In the example below, we've chosen to view the data sorted by the "Weighted Values" option:

When you select a particular sorting order, you'll also see an explanation of the sorting (as highlighted in yellow below):

For more details on the Erg Advisor, please refer to the Intel GPA Help File that's installed with the product. Or better yet, download the tool and experiment with the various options within the Erg Advisor.

The Frame Advisor Tool

When you select Frame Advisor from the menu, you'll notice that the layout is similar to that of the Erg Advisor, but the tool appears in its own window. By having Frame Advisor in its own window, you can easily select one erg after the other for analysis without having to reopen the Frame Advisor:

Also note that all frame investigations are visible, even if they have "0 items for review". This approach is used because the frame view is based upon all ergs in the frame (and not dependent upon which ergs you have selected).

Using the Tools with Experiments

Another key feature of the Frame Advisor and the Erg Advisor is that the results reflects the impact of any Intel GPA Frame Analyzer experiments that are in effect. For example, first of all select "1x1 Scissor Rect" from the "Experiments" tab:

Then use the "Refresh" button that now appears on the right-hand side of the advisor to update the findings based on the selected experiments:

Conclusion, and Next Steps

As you can see, we have spent a lot of time developing these tools and fine tuning both the investigations and the display of the results. You now have even more tools available within Intel GPA to quickly and easily isolate performance hotspots within your game, enabling you to more quickly meet your performance targets.

However, we continue to look for ways to improve the product. So we would love to hear your suggestions and comments about these advisors in the Intel GPA Support Forum, especially if you have some "tips & tricks" that you think would be great as a new "plug-in".

For more information about these tools or Intel GPA in general, see the Intel GPA Home Page. You can also download Intel GPA from that site (it's free to Intel's Visual Adrenaline Program members), and try these tools out for yourself!

08-15-2011

01-23-2012

Tech Articles

Intel® GPA

Game analysis and optimization is critical, and the complexity of modern GPU's makes this task even more difficult. Intel GPA has just added new "advisors" that automate the process of identifying the most likely causes of performance issues in a frame.

Announcing Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers 4.3

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Announcing Version 4.3 of Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA)
December 5th, 2011

Introduction

Intel® GPA is a powerful, agile developer tool suite for analyzing and optimizing games, media, and other graphics-intensive applications.

We're proud to announce the availability of Intel GPA 4.3. The product is available at no charge to members of Intel's Visual Adrenaline Developer Program. To download Intel GPA and register for Visual Adrenaline membership, use this link. For more information on membership in this free developer program, visit the Visual Adrenaline Home Page.

Overview of the Release

We've seen some key trends in the marketplace that have helped shape the new features found in Intel GPA 4.3:

an increase in the complexity of GPU's, so that users have requested "hints" from Intel GPA as to what parts of their graphics code are good candidates for analysis and optimization
an increase in customers wanting to analyze their games on configurations with smaller memory and compute resources, such as tablets and notebooks
game developers have been switching to Microsoft Windows 7* as their primary development OS

Therefore, this latest release includes new features:

The addition of two new analytical tools within Intel GPA Frame Analyzer, Frame Advisor (beta) and Erg Advisor (beta). These tools automate the process of finding the most likely causes of performance issues within a frame, such as ergs which have an excessive amount of occluded geometry. This is probably the "best" feature of this latest version of Intel GPA! For detailed information about these tools, see this article.
The addition of a "new" tool, Intel GPA System Analyzer, which functions similar to the Intel GPA System Analyzer HUD, but this version of the tool runs in a client/server mode and supports additional charting options. This is useful for analyzing netbooks and other computers with limited resources, when you want to analyze system performance in a multiple-monitor setup on a single machine, or when you need access to more than four metrics at one time. By the way, users of GPA 2.x and 3.x may recognize this tool -- it's a "supercharged" version of the "old" Intel GPA System Analyzer!
All tools now support the Microsoft DirectX* 9 Ex API (in addition to DirectX* 9, DirectX* 10, DirectX* 10.1, and DirectX* 11). This will help Windows XP* users transition to Windows 7*.

Also, in order to focus our development efforts on newer operating systems and technologies, Microsoft Windows XP* will no longer be supported with new versions of Intel® GPA, starting with Intel® GPA 4.3. However, Intel® GPA 4.2 will continue to be available for some time as the last validated version of GPA for use with Windows XP*, but no updates will be provided. Intel® GPA will continue to be validated with Microsoft DirectX* 9, 9 Ex, 10, 10.1 and 11 on Microsoft Windows Vista*, Microsoft Windows 7*, and other new OS versions as they are released. If you need access to Intel GPA 4.2 for Windows XP*, see this article.

Detailed List of What's New in This Release

Version 4.3 of the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers contains the following new features (the Intel GPA Help File will provide even more details than shown here):

General

Support for Microsoft DirectX9Ex*

Intel® GPA Monitor

Ability to launch Intel® GPA Frame Analyzer, Intel® GPA Platform Analyzer and Intel® System Analyzer tools from the Intel® GPA Monitor tool tray menu.
Ability to detect the Intel graphics driver version and notify the user when a newer driver is available.

Intel® GPA Frame Analyzer

New Erg Advisor (Beta) and Frame Advisor (Beta) functionality, helping you find potential issues in the selected ergs and in the entire frame
Ability to enter (X, Y) coordinates and get the pixel history for that location in the Render Target View and Pixel History Tab
Metrics descriptions added to Frame Overview and Details tabs
Ability to reset View Selection, Metric Selections settings in the Scene Overview Panel, and X-Axis/Y-Axis settings in the Erg Visualization Panel to the default via the Edit menu > Reset Metric Selections.
Ability to filter the API Details by the erg number or the erg ID.
Ability to filter the API Details on the ergs that are selected in the Ergs Visualization Panel and in the Scene Overview Panel.
Ability to display one or more ergs, which are selected in the API Details dialog box, in the Ergs Visualization Panel.
DirectCompute ergs are color-coded in the Erg Visualization Panel

Intel® GPA Platform Analyzer

Ability to show/hide Logical Threads
Task states displayed in the Task Timeline panel; this enables you to see when instrumented tasks are actually running on a CPU core or are suspended

Intel® GPA System Analyzer (New!)

Similar to the Intel GPA System Analyzer HUD, but analyzes your application using a client/server mode (which is important especially for netbooks)
Minimized performance impact on the application
More detailed metrics resolution
Ability to view more than four metrics at the same time
Ability to compare several metrics by displaying them in the same chart

Where To Next...

To start using Intel GPA, check out the documentation that's installed with the product (access the Help File through the Microsoft Windows* Start Menu for the Intel GPA product). For those who have not used Intel GPA before, become familiar with key Intel GPA concepts by reading the Intel GPA Getting Started Guide.

Want more info on Intel GPA? Check out either the Intel GPA Home Page, the Intel GPA FAQ, or the Intel GPA Knowledge Base articles.

We want to be the best tool for your graphics optimization work, and welcome your comments and suggestions in the Intel GPA Support Forum.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

08-15-2011

01-20-2012

Tech Articles

Intel® GPA

Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) is a powerful, agile developer tool suite for analyzing and optimizing games, media, and graphics-intensive applications. Available now, Intel GPA 4.3 adds new features requested by graphics developers.

Intel® GPA 4 Tip: Getting Started with Intel® GPA

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:00:00 -0700

Hello!

Starting to use a new tool is never easy, as there are lots of new terms and concepts to learn before you become proficient with the tool. And you've probably been using other tools or procedures that do things differently, which makes switching even more difficult. So the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) product team is trying to make the learning process as easy as possible.

First of all, start with the Intel GPA Product Brief, as well as the Intel GPA FAQ. These two documents provide high-level information about the product -- you'll see what the product can do, and learn how some of the key game developers have adopted Intel GPA as part of their analysis and optimization process.

However, while the Product Brief and the FAQ documents are great for learning what Intel GPA can do, they don't necessarily show you how to start using the tools. For understanding key Intel GPA concepts and the major workflows, check out these sources of information:

Intel GPA Getting Started Guide
- written for those new to Intel GPA
- presents key concepts of the product, and walks through many common workflows in a step-by-step manner
Intel GPA training videos
- present short "hands-on" videos on the use of the Intel GPA tools (with key workflows that game developers use in their day-by-day analysis and optimization tasks)
- developed without voice-over narration, these videos will be helpful even when English is not your native language
- all videos are short and focused on a single topic or workflow -- each video is typically less than five minutes

Hopefully this has given you enough information to get started using Intel GPA. If not, please check out the Intel GPA Home Page for more training material, and let us know what we can do to improve the product.

08-15-2011

01-20-2012

Tech Articles

Intel® GPA

Starting to use a new game analysis tool isn't easy, as there are lots of new terms and concepts to learn. In this article we'll show you how to quickly get up to speed with Intel® GPA -- the articles to read and where to get more information.

Intel® GPA Tip: don't change an application's monitor once System Analyzer HUD has started analyzing the app

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Introduction

The Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) developer tool suite provides a complete toolkit for analyzing and optimizing your games, media, and other graphics-intensive applications.

This article describes a limitation of one of the tools in the Intel GPA suite, the Intel GPA System Analyzer HUD. We'll describe the limitation, then provide some suggestions to keep you from encountering the issue.

Issue Description

When using the Intel GPA System Analyzer HUD (Heads-Up Display) to analyze a game, after the HUD appears:

do not move an application's window from one monitor to another
do not change from windowed mode to full screen mode (or full screen mode to windowed mode)

In both of these situations Intel GPA may either stop running (that is, the HUD disappears), or you may see errors in the application or Intel GPA.

Workarounds

If you encounter this issue when trying to analyze a game or application with Intel GPA, there are options available to you.

Applications often provide an option to force use of a particular monitor, or to startup in windowed mode or full screen mode. You can typically do this through a command line option or using a "config file". For example, many games allow you to startup in windowed mode by appending "-window" to the command line (or "-fullscreen" for full screen mode). If no option exists for starting the application on a specific monitor, try disabling all secondary screens to force the application to run on that monitor.

To use command line options with Intel GPA, right-click on the Intel GPA Monitor in the taskbar notification area, select Analyze Application..., then in the Command Line field enter the pathname of the application and all command line options, then select Run:

Where to Next...

If this article doesn't help solve your problem, please let us know in the Intel GPA Support Forums. Also, if you have suggestions for how we can improve the product, leave us a note on the Support Forums -- we would love to hear from you!

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

08-15-2011

01-20-2012

Tech Articles

Intel® GPA

This article describes a limitation with the Intel® GPA System Analyzer HUD. When analyzing an application you can't change the monitor or change from windowed mode to full screen mode (or vice versa). We provide suggestions for avoiding this limitation.

Hierarchical Stochastic Motion Blur Rasterization

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Hierarchical Stochastic Motion Blur Rasterization

By Jacob Munkberg, Petrik Clarberg, Jon Hasselgren, Robert Toth, Masamichi Sugihara, Tomas Akenine-Möller, Intel Corp.

We present a hierarchical traversal algorithm for stochastic rasterization of motion blur, which efficiently reduces the number of inside tests needed to resolve spatio-temporal visibility. Our method is based on novel tile against moving primitive tests that also provide temporal bounds for the overlap. The algorithm works entirely in homogeneous coordinates, supports MSAA, facilitates efficient hierarchical spatio-temporal occlusion culling, and handles typical game workloads with widely varying triangle sizes. Furthermore, we use high-quality sampling patterns based on digital nets, and present a novel reordering that allows efficient procedural generation with good anti-aliasing properties. Finally, we evaluate a set of hierarchical motion blur rasterization algorithms in terms of both depth buffer bandwidth, shading efficiency, and arithmetic complexity.

Read the High Performance Graphics paper: Hierarchical Stochastic Motion Blur Rasterization [PDF 5.3 MB]

Presented at: High Performance Graphics 2011, Vancouver, B.C. Canada

Jacob Munkberg

Petrik Clarberg

Jon Hasselgren

Robert Toth

Masamichi Sugihara

Tomas Akenine-Möller

07-30-2011

Tech Articles

Research

Presents a hierarchical traversal algorithm for stochastic rasterization of motion blur, which efficiently reduces the number of inside tests needed to resolve spatio-temporal visibility.

Unable to obtain mapped memory

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:00:00 -0700

Product: Intel® C++ Compiler

Operating System: Windows*

Problem Description:
Compilation failed when using precompiled headers with error message: unable to obtain mapped memory (see pch_diag.txt)
Precompiled headers(PCH) are used to reduce compilation time. To achieve this, the compilation result of the header files is stored in binary files with the suffix .pchi. For the next compilation the PCHs are directly loaded into memory. They have to be loaded on the exact same memory address where they were created. The default address used is 0x30000000 in virtual memory.
If the memory address is already used by another program or library the compilation will fail with the error: “unable to obtain mapped memory (see pch_diag.txt)”. As newer versions of windows are using Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) more and more, the probability that the default memory location is already in use increases. Due the nature of the ASLR it isn’t predictable how often the error will occur.

Resolution Status:
A compiler switch is available to choose a different memory location.
An internal compiler switch lets you choose the start address in memory of the PCH. To find a proper memory address you can look in the pch_diag.txt file or use a program that shows you the virtual memory map of a process(like VMMap from Sysinternals/Microsoft). The pch_diag.txt file will be automatically created if the error occurs.
Before starting to investigate you can try the memory location 0x20000000 which often solves the issue. To do this, append the following parameter to your compiler command line (address in decimal format for compiler 12.0 Update 4 and below):

/Qoption,cpp,--pch_control=536870912

For Compiler 12.0 Update 5 and later:
/Qoption,cpp,--pch_control=20000000

If this doesn’t solve the issue, the pch_diag.txt file shows you the virtual memory map of the compiler address space for the failed compilation. It looks like:

=== Dumping Virtual Address Space Info ===
Page size: 00001000
Minimum application address: 00010000
Maximum application address: FFFEFFFF
Base Address: 00033000 Region Size: 0000D000
…
Base Address: 1008B000 Region Size: 00075000
Base Address: 4494E000 Region Size: 2B6A2000
…
Largest Region: 7FFF0000 size: 7FFC0000

The Base Address indicates the start of a reserved/used memory region and the Region Size the length. To find a proper memory location the one right below 0x30000000 is of interest. In this example this is: 0x1008B000. After adding the size of the Region you have a new memory address for your PCH. In this example this would be:

0x1008B000 + 0x00075000 = 0x10100000

There should always be some space between the end of the last reserved/uses memory location and the PCH. A proper address would therefore be 0x11000000. The parameters for the compiler would look like:

/Qoption,cpp,--pch_control=285212672

For Compiler 12.0 Update 5 and later:
/Qoption,cpp,--pch_control=11000000

Note:
The provided parameter is an internal. It may change anytime.

Intel® GPA 4.1 error message: "The timestamp counter (TSC) in this computer may be unsynchronized among the multiple CPU cores."

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Introduction
When using tracing with Version 4.1 (build 149468) of Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA), you may encounter the following error message: "The timestamp counter (TSC) in this computer may be unsynchronized among the multiple CPU cores. Tracing is disabled." When you receive this message, you will not be able to capture trace files for analysis by Intel GPA Platform Analyzer. Since this error disables your ability to collect trace files, as a side effect you will not be able to use the Graphics Checker feature on these systems (as this feature needs to collect trace data).

If you encounter this issue, we recommend that you download the latest version of Intel GPA, which will allow you to create trace capture files on all systems. If you are a current registered user of Intel GPA, you may download the update from this site. If this link doesn't work, you can go to the Intel GPA Home Page and click "download now" to get the latest version.

Discussion
On multi-core systems each of the cores has its own timestamp clock -- Intel GPA reads the timestamp clock on each core to gather timing data stored in the trace file. For tracing to work with a high degree of accuracy, the Intel GPA Platform Analyzer requires synchronized timestamp clocks across all of the multiple cores on the system, and most PC systems released over the past couple of years provide synchronized timestamp clocks.

However, there are cases where the timestamp clock is not synchronized -- this usually occurs on older CPU's and some netbook computers. When Intel GPA detects this situation, it will do the best it can with the information available to it, but typically with less accuracy than systems where the the TSC is synchronized.

Therefore, we recommend that you use processors with special hardware support that guarantees synchronization, which includes the 1st-generation or 2nd-generation of Intel® Core™ Processors (i3, i5, and i7). As the GPA team hasn't performed exhaustive testing across all CPU's, we cannot provide information on whether other systems have accurate cross-CPU clock synchronization.

Extra Credit
A key feature of modern CPU technology is lowering system power utilization by reducing the clock frequency of one or more cores in a multi-core system, a technique useful for both laptops and desktops alike. However, on some systems the clocks on the different cores could get out of sync since they are running at different frequencies. It's only in the past few years that CPU's have added hardware features to guarantee synchronization across cores, and this feature is available in systems such as Intel® Core™ Processors.

Timestamp synchronization is not an issue with Intel GPA Frame Analyzer, since you are simply measuring the time to perform a specific draw call or series of draw calls on the GPU. However, Intel GPA Platform Analyzer tracks the timing of specific functions across both the CPU cores and the GPU, so having a high degree of accuracy allows you to track the exact timing of individual tasks running on each CPU core or the GPU.

If you have further comments or questions about Intel GPA, please visit the Intel GPA Support Forums.

08-15-2011

01-20-2012

Tech Articles

Intel® GPA

Users of Intel® GPA 4.1 may see the following error message: "The timestamp counter (TSC) in this computer may be unsynchronized among the multiple CPU cores. Tracing is disabled." This article describes the problem and a fix for this issue.

Announcing Version 3.0 of Intel® Graphics Checker Software Assessment Tool

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Version 3 of Intel® Graphics Checker now available for download

If you're a game developer, Intel has some great tools to help make your game "best in class"!

Intel Graphics Checker 3.0 now works together with Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA) to help you quickly create an Intel® GPA data capture file and generate a game playability report that can be uploaded to start engaging with the Intel® Software Partner Program.

The benefits are that you will better understand the playability of your game on PCs with Intel® Graphics, access tips and tools to improve your game’s acceptance in the marketplace, and access resources that can broaden the worldwide audience for your game.

If you're already familiar with the tool and want to download the latest version now, you can get it here.

What's New

Version 3.0 of the Intel Graphics Checker contains the following new features:

Analysis of a special data capture file generated by Intel GPA that contains approximately 600 frames of graphics data.
Creates an updated game playability report containing key hardware and software configuration details, plus frames per second, CPU utilization, and GPU utilization metrics.
Ability to upload a game playability report to the Intel Software Partner Program website and access an updated, customized Software Assessment Report that compares game playability results to Intel-suggested values, provides recommendations and next steps, and displays a Software Assessment History.

Getting Started

Download Intel GPA from this site.
Download Intel Graphics Checker from here and install on the same PC that contains Intel GPA.
After launching your game using the Intel GPA Monitor, use the Intel GPA System Analyzer HUD keyboard shortcut (the default is Ctrl-Shift-B) to capture approximately 600 frames of graphics data into a Intel Graphics Checker data capture file.
After capturing an Intel® Graphics Checker data file using the Intel® GPA System Analyzer HUD keyboard shortcut, launch Intel Graphics Checker and follow the on-screen instructions to analyze the data capture and view results such as can be seen in the following example report:

Your Intel Graphics Checker report can then be uploaded to the Intel Software Partner Program website, to access a customized Software Assessment Report that compares game playability results to Intel-suggested values, provides recommendations and next steps, and displays a software assessment history, such as seen here (click on the image to download a sample report in PDF format):

Where to Next...

If you are interested in improving your game’s playability, you’ve now got Intel GPA at your fingertips. Intel GPA is a powerful, agile tool suite enabling game developers to utilize the full performance potential of Intel® multi-core processors and Intel® processor graphics. If you are not already familiar with using Intel GPA to identify and solve game performance problems, the Getting Started Guide is an excellent place to dive in and…well, get started!

Also, there’s a couple of brief (2-3 minute) video tutorials showing how Intel GPA and Intel Graphics Checker work together: Creating an Intel Graphics Checker Data File and Analyzing an Intel Graphics Checker Data File.

To learn more about Intel® Graphics Checker, visit the Intel® Software Partner Program Software Assessment Center. If your company is not already a member, join today – enrollment is free and takes only a few minutes. In addition to valuable development resources, members can access business resources designed to increase their product visibility with a worldwide audience.

David Valdovinos

Neal Pierman

05-15-2011

Tech Articles

Intel® GPA

Performance Analysis

This article shows you how to use the Intel Graphics Checker tool, which is part of the Intel Software Partner Program.

VTune Amplifier XE for 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New performance analysis features for Intel® Microarchitecture formerly codename Sandy Bridge!

Are you using one of the new 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processors? If so, you should know about all the new features just added to the Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE Performance Analyzer! VTune Amplifier XE supports several levels of performance tuning for Intel processors. For hardware and microarchitectural tuning, VTune Amplifier XE allows users to sample the occurence of various events on the platform (such as cache misses, branch mispredicts, stalls, etc) and track them to the executing function, process, and thread that caused them. At the software/algorithmic level, VTune Amplifier XE allows developers to find which functions take the most time to execute, determine an application's concurrency, and locate potential threading issues.

And beginning with update 2, just launched this month, VTune Amplifier XE has the following new features specifically to support the Intel® Microarchitecture formerly codename Sandy Bridge:

Pre-defined event profiles let you collect all the events necessary for diagnosing certain issues
Built-in metrics use event values and system information to compute useful quantities such as % processor cycles spent on memory access, DTLB miss overhead, and Mispredicted branch cost
Automatic highlighting of values over a "normal" threshold for a particular metric helps you focus on potential issues
Tooltips and detailed documentation help you understand the metrics and events and what they are measuring

These new features are the result of our efforts to continually improve VTune Amplifier XE and make it as user-friendly as we can. The pre-defined profiles, metrics computations, and automatic highlighting are designed to help novice performance tuners to begin making insights into their platform's performance right away. You can evaluate VTune Amplifier XE for free here. VTune Amplifier XE works on most recent Intel processors, although many of the features mentioned above are just for Intel processors codenamed Sandy Bridge.

Over the next several months we will be releasing even more helpful documentation and guidance on performance analysis of processors codenamed Sandy Bridge. Up next is the 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor Optimization Guide, with details on some of the most common performance issues, how to find them, and suggestions for improvement.

Intel® GPA 4 Tip: workaround for install errrors

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Introduction
It is possible that a very small number of users will receive an error while trying to install Version 4 of the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA).

This article provides information regarding the error message and how to install a Microsoft* patch that fixes the issue.

Problem Description
Some users may receive the following error when installing one or more of the prerequisites required by Intel GPA: "An error occurred while installing system components for Intel GPA Prerequisite. Setup cannot continue until all system components have been successfully installed."

When this error occurs the user cannot install Intel GPA.

Problem Analysis and Resolution
When analyzing the error, the Intel GPA Development Team found that the issue is that a number of security certificates required by Intel GPA are not always available on the installation machine, especially if the machine is "new".

To fix the problem, download and install the most recent Update for Root Certificates from Microsoft Web Site (usually accomplished by using the Windows Update procedure), then retry the installation of Intel GPA. [NOTE: to manually update security certificates, as of March of 2011 you can install this Microsoft* patch; though it states the patch is for Microsoft Windows XP*, it also works for Microsoft Windows Vista* and Microsoft Windows 7* systems.]

If updating the certificates does not resolve the error, please start a new thread on the Intel GPA Support Forum, and we'll work with you to resolve the issue.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

08-15-2011

01-20-2012

Tech Articles

Intel® GPA

Under some situations Intel® encounters an error when trying to install prerequisites (such as the Microsoft DirectX* runtime libraries). This article provides a workaround for the issue.

Intel Software Network articles Feed

Intel® GPA 4 Tip: Using the New Frame Advisor and Erg Advisor Tools

Announcing Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers 4.3

Intel® GPA 4 Tip: Getting Started with Intel® GPA

Intel® GPA Tip: don't change an application's monitor once System Analyzer HUD has started analyzing the app

Introduction

Issue Description

Workarounds

Where to Next...

Hierarchical Stochastic Motion Blur Rasterization

Hierarchical Stochastic Motion Blur RasterizationBy Jacob Munkberg, Petrik Clarberg, Jon Hasselgren, Robert Toth, Masamichi Sugihara, Tomas Akenine-Möller, Intel Corp.

Unable to obtain mapped memory

Intel® GPA 4.1 error message: "The timestamp counter (TSC) in this computer may be unsynchronized among the multiple CPU cores."

Announcing Version 3.0 of Intel® Graphics Checker Software Assessment Tool

Version 3 of Intel® Graphics Checker now available for download

What's New

Getting Started

Where to Next...

VTune Amplifier XE for 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor

Intel® GPA 4 Tip: workaround for install errrors

Hierarchical Stochastic Motion Blur Rasterization

By Jacob Munkberg, Petrik Clarberg, Jon Hasselgren, Robert Toth, Masamichi Sugihara, Tomas Akenine-Möller, Intel Corp.