Software & Tools

MetaWare Integrated Profiler

The Integrated Profiler is designed to visualize data from several differing sources and provide relational information about the sources so the user can view relationships from one data source to another. For instance, the current Integrated Profiler can provide relational profiling for source code (using the MetaWare™ Debugger), and profiling for ARC International's MQX® RTOS™ (using TAD). Integrated Profiler can show data visualized in static charts such as bar, pie, area, or plot charts, and display synchronized real-time data in a waveform and real-time plot charts.

Integrated Profiler is a tool used to display data from any type of generator, and does not typically generate any of the data. We connect the data generator to the Integrated Profiler using a Data Source API. The API allows the profiler to visualize any type of data you give it and relate the data to any number of other sources in order to draw relationships from one set of data to another.

Integrated Profiler can simultaneously show several types of profiling data including:

EDS Client: Real-time statistics and data from a live target running MQX/RTCS and the EDS task. As long as the target is running EDS, you can use Integrated Profiler as your debugger with the EDS Client feature.

Above Figure: Message queues in an MQX application. Click on a queue to view specific details for that queue.

MQX Performance: Performance statistics and task concurrency from MQX obtained from the MQX Kernel Log.

Above figure: Time line chart showing the transition of tasks. Click on any event (state transition, fired interrupt, or function call) to view details.

MetaWare Prof: Visualized profiling data from the MetaWare statistical profiler.

Above figure: MetaWare Profiling data visualized, in this case, function calls.

Call Graph: Visualized call graph of a program run using the MetaWare debugger.

Above figure: Call graph showing function call hierarchy of my custom application.

VCD: Value Change Dump file output from ModelSim or other hardware simulation tool displayed as a waveform, similarly to ModelSim.

Above figure: Value change dump file plotted on a time line chart.

The value of integrated profiler is that it can take profiling data from any or all of these sources, and show them all using one consistent GUI because at its core, Integrated Profiler is a generalized display mechanism for profiling data. The following screen capture shows available profiling data on the left, stack usage for an MQX RTOS application on the top, and zoomed in on my state transition graph on the bottom. This way the profiler presents multiple views of the same program adamtest.out, and MQX application running on the MetaWare simulator.