Profiling allows the time spent in specific parts of an application to be examined. It does not require any special compile time or link time options. The only requirement is that low level symbols must be included in the image. These are inserted by the linker unless it is instructed otherwise by the -Nodebug option.

Profiling data is collected by the ARM Debugger while the code is being executed. The data is saved to a file. It is then loaded into the ARM profiler which displays the results. The profiler in turn generates a profile report.