Using Intel Thread Profiler for Win32 Threads: Philosophy and Theory

Overview

In the past, software profiling tools have concentrated on measuring the execution time of functions and procedures within applications. For serial applications this was useful information that guided the programmer to those parts of the code that could most benefit from optimization or threading. For applications that have already been threaded, this type of information often has little value. Information that relates directly to performance issues from threaded and parallel execution is of much more use. This is the first paper in a two-part series that explains what Intel Thread Profiler for Win32 Threads does and how to use it effectively on one's own explicitly threaded applications.