Software testing with Intel VTune Performance Analyzer

By Michael J Huelskoetter (90 posts) on November 6, 2008 at 7:18 am

It used to be a real hassle to analyze the source code of complex applications. Finding bottlenecks, sub-optimal function calls and other annoying malfunctions often led to trial-and-error approaches.

Fortunately today these frustrating „methods" of software testing and debugging are history. Companies like Intel created test suites, for example the Intel VTune Performance Analyzer, which help software developers examine their applications regarding bad or suboptimal code.

VTune Performance Analyzer offers different methods in order to achieve optimal source code:

  • Event-based sampling finds bottlenecks with very low overhead. VTune identifies problems such as cache misses, branch mis-predictions and bus bandwidth.
  • Source and disassembly views show you exactly which lines of code are taking the most time.
  • Call Graph determines calling sequences and graphically displays the critical path. It also shows you the context of the bottleneck. Moreover VTune finds the functions which take the most time to be processed or are being blocked the longest.
  • VTune also identifies system level performance issues using the Counter Monitor to track system activity and resource consumption during runtime. For example, it can locate bottlenecks in the application that reduce available memory unnecessarily.

Another good thing about Intel VTune Performance Analyzer is its compiler independence. So Microsoft and Intel compilers for C, C++ and Fortran are supported as well as Microsoft .NET including C# and Visual Basic.

You are still not convinced? Ok, companies like Musicmatch, Adobe/Macromedia, Nvidia and even Microsoft are and use VTune for optimization purposes. There are still some doubts? Then please visit Intel at Microsoft Tech-Ed EMEA Developers 2008 and talk to their software experts. They will answer all your VTune questions!

Categories: Events, Software Tools
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For more complete information about compiler optimizations, see our Optimization Notice.

Comments (6)

June 30, 2009 2:28 AM PDT


riaz		 hi, really nice information. it is useful for my studies about software testing. i got good informations in http://www.macrotesting.com too. thanks for the good information
October 15, 2009 2:05 AM PDT


sri padmaharini		 may i know abt the history of this awesome tool?
January 9, 2010 2:53 AM PST


Raushan kumar		 For study about Intel VTune
October 6, 2010 9:34 PM PDT


Quality Assurance News		 Thanks for sharing a precious content on software testing. Clevertester also doing work on software testing and quality assurance.
October 8, 2010 2:07 AM PDT


Open Source Testing Tools		 I would love to see more custom development projects also make use of automated regression testing, automated build and automated deployment.
November 23, 2010 7:36 PM PST


katerina		 very nice blog
http://www.glssystems.net/

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