5.4. Performance Counters for Linux (PCL) Tools and perf

Performance Counters for Linux (PCL) is a new kernel-based subsystem that provides a framework for collecting and analyzing performance data. These events will vary based on the performance monitoring hardware and the software configuration of the system. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 includes this kernel subsystem to collect data and the user-space tool perf to analyze the collected performance data.

The PCL subsystem can be used to measure hardware events, including retired instructions and processor clock cycles. It can also measure software events, including major page faults and context switches. For example, PCL counters can compute the Instructions Per Clock (IPC) from a process's counts of instructions retired and processor clock cycles. A low IPC ratio indicates the code makes poor use of the CPU. Other hardware events can also be used to diagnose poor CPU performance.

Performance counters can also be configured to record samples. The relative frequency of samples can be used to identify which regions of code have the greatest impact on performance.