Unlike other offerings, VTune analyzer provides both sampling and call graph analysis. Even if you plan to do mostly call graph analysis, running sampling first lets you identify the modules that need it so you only pay Call Graph's larger overhead for the modules that need to be analyzed. This can be vital on large projects. Sampling is great for analysis of "loopy" code. Call Graph is usually better for "branchy" code. You need both to get the job done right.

Low Overhead Sampling Profiling
Event-based sampling finds your bottleneck with very low overhead (typically less than 5 percent). Identify problems such as cache misses, branch mis-predictions, and bus bandwidth. Because it is system-wide, event-based sampling can be used to tune libraries and drivers as well as application programs.

All Architectures:

Large Enterprise and HPC Systems:

Intel® Itanium® Architecture:

Profile JavaScript* and Flash* Code

New profiling support in emerging internet browsers and other script-oriented products allow developers working with new JavaScript* or Flash* JIT technologies to analyze their code.  Use the VTune analyzer to optimize for scalable performance of these codes on Windows* and Linux* to ensure the best end user experience with your application. VTune analyzer supports profiling JIT'd code when browser vendors add the required support. This enables deep performance analysis of these additional languages:

•  JavaScript / AJAX

•  Flash (Action Script)

Check with your browser supplier for details on when their browser will enable support.

Profile Dynamically Generated Code

Many applications today emit their own runtime-generated or just-in-time (JIT) code. New profiling APIs in the VTune analyzer enable performance analysis of dynamic code and allow you to view annotated source code directly from the analysis results.

Access to VTune Analyzer's Open Data Model

VTune analyzer can now support many different software platforms with performance sampling analysis.  Use the new open data model APIs to combine the VTune analyzer's powerful GUI on Windows* or Linux* with data from your custom collector to analyze any application on a wide range of platforms.

•  Collect data on operating systems not directly supported by the VTune analyzer.

•  Supported Windows* Operating Systems

•  Supported Linux* Distributions

•  Collect data on embedded Intel hardware based platforms.

Access to the latest Experimental Technologies

VTune analyzer users have access to the latest experimental performance tuning technologies Intel has to offer. Visit whatif.intel.com and look for Intel® Performance Tuning Utility and Intel® Platform Modeling with Machine Learning . These tools include a number of exciting capabilities including:

•  Statistical Call Tree - profiles with low overhead to detect where time is spent in your application

•  Basic Block Analysis - displays hotspots with basic block granularity and generates a control flow graph for advanced analysis of application, even without the source code

•  Data Access Profiling - identifies memory hotspots and relates them to code hotspots Dependency Plots - visualize the relationships between metrics

•  Event Rank - view the list of best predictors of performance using machine learning

VTune Analyzer Displays What the Compiler Knows An optimizing compiler can do a lot better with just a few tips from you. We've integrated the Intel® compilers with Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer to make this easy. The Intel compiler optimization reports contain a wealth of information to make your application faster. VTune analyzer locates your critical, time consuming "hot spot" and filters the compiler optimization report to show only the lines that apply to the code selected. Now you can see what the compiler optimized and choose pragmas to further improve performance. For example, a single click tells you that the compiler didn't optimize your critical loop because of an assumed vector dependency. You know there is no dependency and insert a pragma telling the compiler to ignore it which makes it faster. Currently, optimization report filtering works exclusively with Intel® C++ and Fortran Compilers 9.1 and higher, but it utilizes a standard format open to other compilers.

Click to enlarge After you find your hotspot using Intel® VTune™ Analyzer, select the hot lines of code in the source view and click an icon to see the compiler's tuning advice.

New More Effective Tuning Methodology Supported
Pipeline stall accounting radically improves tuning by focusing the user on the instances of possible issues (like cache misses) which actually end up mattering. Core™2 Duo and Core™2 Quad processors have greatly enhanced performance analysis capabilities. These processors support more events, higher precision in event location correlation, and a new and wonderful pipeline stall accounting.

New Events for Tuning Multi-Core Intel® Processors
New events measure parallelism, core sharing of the bus and cache, and modified data sharing by threads. These identify opportunities to improve threading, tune multi-core sharing of the bus and cache, and optimize cache-line usage.

New Linux Distributions!
Check out the details on the latest supported distributions .

Faster Call Graph - Selective Instrumentation for Java* and Native Code
Now you can selectively instrument Java* or native code to improve runtime performance. By gathering data only on the modules being tuned, overhead is reduced and runtime is improved.

Supports the Latest Intel® Processors
Supports the latest Intel® quad-core processors ( details ).

Powerful User Interface Improvements

Tune Inline Functions
Tune your inlined code with instance-specific event counts on the source and assembly views. Performance can vary by context, i.e., by where a function is called. VTune analyzer provides event data for each occurrence of an inlined function.

		ICC 8.1 or higher
		GCC 3.2 or higher **

One-click Hotspot Navigation With event counts next to each source line, you can easily see how hot each line is. But in a large source file, how do you find the hottest spot? Or jump to the next hottest line which may be a thousand lines away? Easy, just select the event you want to navigate by clicking in its column, and then click the Min, Max, Next and Previous icons to quickly browse through your hot spots. Branch and Call Navigation Made Easy Instantly follow a branch in disassembly by clicking a menu. No more hunting for the destination, just choose "Go to target" to scroll the display. Create Meaningful Event Labels Name your custom events using event aliasing. When you create a custom event, it is often difficult to remember exactly what you did. Event aliasing creates a custom label that is meaningful to you. VTune analyzer then uses this label in all event displays.

Click to enlarge Click the Max icon to scroll to the hottest line in the current source view. Next, Previous and Min buttons quickly take you through the list of hotspots. To navigate a different event, just click the desired column.

Large Enterprise and HPC Systems

Minimize Bus Traffic in Non-uniform Memory Architecture (NuMA) Systems
by storing sampling data in local CPU memory. This is critical to avoid saturating the interconnect bus and slowing the system under test.

New for Itanium® Architecture!

Note: Features listed as "New" are new since the last major release 8.0. Some have been previewed in minor updates and beta releases.

**GCC uses the older Dwarf2 format. In some cases there is not enough information to associate the inlined instance with the correct caller source line. In this case VTune analyzer will guess and associate the contribution of the inlined instance with the nearest caller source line. This may create an event mismatch between Source and Function Views. The newer Dwarf3 format used by ICC 8.1 and higher eliminates this problem by unambiguously associating inlined instances with the caller source line. GCC 4.0.2 may partially support Dwarf3, but it not complete enough to help with this problem.

Powerful User Interface Improvements

Supports Intel® Architecture-Compatible Processors

Use VTune Performance Analyzer for Linux to speed applications for a variety of supported environments:

Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer for Linux supports two usage models:

Notes:
If you are not using a default kernel on the supported distributions listed in the table above, use the included driver kit to compile drivers for your kernel.

Every purchase of an Intel® Software Development Product includes a year of support services, which provides access to Intel® Premier Support and all product releases during that time. You receive online access to our expert engineering support staff and additional technical documentation.