TFP: Time-sensitive, flow-specific profiling at runtime

Abstract

Program profiling can help performance prediction and compiler optimization. This paper describes the initial work behind TFP, a new profiling strategy that can gather and verify a range of flow-specific information at runtime. While TFP can collect more refined information than block, edge or path profiling, it is only 5.75% slower than a very fast runtime path-profiling technique. Statistics collected using TFP over the SPEC2000 benchmarks reveal possibilities for further flow-specific runtime optimizations. We also show how TFP can improve the overall performance of a real application. © Springer-Verlag 2004.