The Counter Configuration dialog box has a drag and drop interface to facilitate adding new performance counters to your existing Events to Collect hierarchy.
It contains the following two areas:
- Available Events
The Available Events section contains a categorized list of events offered for each core on your current target as well as a list of OS-specific events. The events contained in the processor lists depends on the type of processor as does the number of events that you can add. Events that appear in gray are already in the Events to Collect hierarchy. The maximum number of available events and the amount remaining are in the upper right hand corner of the Available Events list. Once you have reached this maximum, all entries in the list are grayed out and you cannot add any additional events to the Events to Collect hierarchy.
- Events to Collect
This list of categories and events is what the Timeline view uses for its line graphs. Each category listed here appears in the Timeline view as a set of line graphs and each of its subordinate events appears as a graph within it.
Adding new eventsTo add events to the Events to Collect hierarchy, select and drag them from the list of available events and drop them where you want to place them in the hierarchy. A red arrow and line indicate where Streamline places the added events.
The line shows you the order of placement, but the arrow indicates whether the new event is added to an existing category or a new category.
An inset triangle that sits on the left edge of the box of an existing event in the Events to Collect hierarchy means the new event is added to the list. In the example, it is inserted below L2 miss in the Cache category.
A triangle that sits a bit to the left of the existing events, in line with event categories, means the new event is inserted in a new category. The default name of the new category name is dependent on the type of the event.
To remove events from the Events to Collect hierarchy, select them and press Delete. If you select a category and press Delete, that category and all of the events it contains are removed from the Events to Collect hierarchy.
The Events to Collect hierarchy dictates what appears in the Timeline view line graphs. The Timeline view includes a set of colored line graphs for each category that you dictate here. In addition to dictating which events appear, you can change how Streamline labels each event and the color of the events line in the Timeline view.
To change an the title of an event, double click on its text in the Events to Collect section. This opens a Change Counter Name dialog box.
Enter a new name for the counter in the provided field.
To change the color of the event on the Timeline view, double-click on the color box of the event in the Events to Collect section. Doing so opens a Color dialog box.
Pick a new color for the event from the existing options or define a custom color. Streamline uses this defined color in the line charts of the Timeline view.
By default, Streamline records a sample at a an interval determined by the Sample Rate drop-down menu in the Capture Options dialog box. To override this, select an event from the Events to Collect list and click the Toggle events-based sampling button on the right side of the dialog box. This activates the Threshold field at the bottom of the Events to Collect list.
When you have enabled events-based sampling, Streamline samples
only when the selected event is triggered a number of times equal
to the value in the Threshold field. For
example, to trigger a sample every 500 L2 cache misses, select L2
miss from the Events to Collect list and enter 500 in
the Threshold field. Given a adequate capture
session, the Samples statistic in many of the Streamline reports
now indicate which processes and functions are the potential cause
of inefficient caching.
Note
Avoid setting a very low threshold for high frequency events. If you enter a Threshold value that generates too many samples, Streamline could fail, and you may need to restart your target. To find an appropriate value to enter in the Threshold field, turn off events-based sampling to run a standard, time-based profile with your desired event counter enabled. Look at the resulting Analysis Report and note the peak per-second value in the chart for your desired counter. Your target for the Threshold field is 1000 samples per second, so if the peak for that event is 2,000,000, a good value to insert in the Threshold field is 2,000.
The Counter Configuration dialog box contains the following buttons:
- Help
Opens Counter Configuration help in the dialog box.
- Load Defaults
Returns the Events to Collect hierarchy to the Streamline defaults.
- Import...
Opens a dialog that enables you to search for a .xml file that you previously generated.
- Export...
Exports the current counters configuration to a .xml file. You can create the .xml file and manually add as an option when running gatord on the target, if you choose to capture data locally.
- Save
Saves your current counter configurations and exits the dialog box.
- Cancel
Exits the Counters Configuration dialog box without saving the defined settings.
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