General event stamping scheme

Details General event stamping scheme General event stamping scheme

1998-10-22

2001-12-18

Hoff, Marc S. (Department: 2857)

Data processing: measuring, calibrating, or testing

Measurement system

History logging or time stamping

C702S182000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06332117

ABSTRACT:

TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates in general to data processing systems, and in particular, the recording of events occurring during an operation of the data processing system.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Event recording (tracing) schemes are generally available in many commercially available operating systems. Tracing is quite useful for analysis of the performance of a program, such as an operating system, and for debugging the program. Essentially, tracing is the recording of specified events occurring within a program, which typically consists of pieces of information identifying “what” and “when” whenever an event occurs. Upon the occurrence of a specified event, a call is made to record the traced event within a trace buffer that has been set up, or initialized, to serially record the information in an efficient manner. Since it is desired to record as many events as possible, there is a need to be efficient with the amount of information recorded; otherwise, the trace buffer can fill quite quickly.
FIG. 3
illustrates an example of a typical entry within a trace buffer. The information recorded will include the type
301
of event for which an entry was recorded, a timestamp
302
indicating when the event occurred relative to other events, and some specified data
303
that relates to the event.
The events are collected over a period of time into the trace buffer and then submitted to a postprocessor for analysis. There are many types of analysis possible, but the most typical relates to the amount of time traversed from one type of an event to another (by using the timestamp field to measure elapsed time).
However, such analyses have limits as to what can be observed and evaluated from the trace data. Therefore, there is a need in the art to analyze the performance of a program from a perspective that is user selectable to provide for more variety in how a program's behavior can be studied.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention addresses the foregoing issues by generalizing the concept of an event's timestamp to be any user-selectable metric of interest (“MOI”). This may include time, bytes allocated by a memory manager, bytes freed by a memory manager, instructions executed, floating point instructions executed, cache misses, misaligned data references, page faults, etc. Essentially, anything that can be monitored and counted within a data processing system may be the MOI.
The present invention then allows the user to easily modify the trace recording mode for any desired MOI.
In an embodiment of the present invention, when a specified event is detected, the event information will be recorded within an entry in the trace buffer, including the MOI. The MOI is specified by a previous mode indicator set by the user or programmer.
The metric of interest may be time or non-time based, and may be monotonically increasing.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention.


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