Code instrumentation system with non intrusive means and cache memory optimization for dynamic monitoring of code segments

摘要

The present invention is directed to a system and method for monitoring performance in an information handling system in a minimally intrusive manner. The method of the present invention includes a collection phase, a placement phase, and an instrumentation phase. During the collection phase, a workload (i.e. code segment) is traced, and instruction and data accesses are determined. During the placement phase, the trace data is passed to a cache simulator. The cache simulator uses the trace data, along with hardware and instrumentation characteristics, to determine an optimal placement for instrumentation code and data. If the desired conflict level is not attainable, the best possible placement is found by executing the code to be monitored with a variety of instrumentation code and data placements until the least intrusive placement is found. The best possible placement is then used during the instrumentation phase to actually execute the instrumented code.