Configuring Data Collection

HP Caliper gives you flexible control over the data you collect from your program. The types of control you have include:

•Particular CPU events to measure. See “Specifying Which CPU Events to Measure” (p. 93).

•Specific load modules you want to collect data for. See “Specifying Which Load Modules to Collect Data For” (p. 94).

•Granularity of the information. See “Controlling Granularity of Data Collection and Reports” (p. 96).

•Particular processes to measure. See “Specifying Processes to Measure” (p. 96).

Specifying Which CPU Events to Measure

Names and descriptions of the CPU events that HP Caliper can measure are available in two text files in the HP Caliper directory.

To measure these events, specify them in command-line options or in a measurement configuration file.

You can find the list of events in the itanium2_cpu_counters.txt file in the doc/text subdirectory in the HP Caliper home directory.

Or you can use the caliper info --cpu-counter all command to see all the events available. For more information, see “How to Display Reference Information About CPU Counters or HP Caliper Report Types” (p. 101).

To fully understand the semantics of these events, see these documents:

•Intel® Itanium® 2 Processor Reference Manual for Software Development and Optimization (May 2004), Chapter 11, “Performance Monitor Events.” This document is available at:

http://www.intel.com/design/itanium2/manuals/251110.htm

•Dual-Core Update to the Intel® Itanium® 2 Processor Reference Manual for Software Development and Optimization (January 2006), Chapter 4, “Performance Monitor Events.” This document is available at:

http://download.intel.com/design/Itanium2/manuals/30806501.pdf

NOTE: You can specify a maximum of four events at a time, or 12 on Integrity servers dual-core Itanium 2 and Itanium 9300 quad-core processors. Depending on how the PMU registers are used, you might be limited to fewer events on any of the Integrity servers.

Shortening CPU Event Names

HP Caliper allows you to shorten CPU event names:

•You can truncate the name to the fewest number of characters that uniquely identify the event, such as CPU_CY to represent CPU_CYCLES.

•You can abbreviate the name using the first letter of each part of the name to create an acronym, such as CC to represent CPU_CYCLES.

For example, these two methods are valid ways of specifying CPU_CYCLES:

$ caliper fprof -s 400000,10%,CPU_CY myprogram

$ caliper fprof -s 400000,10%,CC myprogram

When two event names have conflicting abbreviations, HP Caliper appends a number to each abbreviation to differentiate them. If you specify an ambiguous abbreviation, HP Caliper lists the abbreviations you can use, as in the following example:

Configuring Data Collection 93