[comp.arch] Summary: pixie for SPARCs

hoelzle@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Urs Hoelzle) (11/07/90)

Here's the summary of responses to my request for a "pixie" for
SPARCs.  Thanks to all those who responded.

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From: jfk@cs.brown.edu (John Kraft)

The FIELD system developed by Steve Reiss here at Brown supports this
type of profiling. FIELD runs on SPARC-based systems as well as
DECstations. Contact jsb@cs.brown.edu for additional information.

From: spr@cs.brown.edu (Steve Reiss)

I have an instruction counting profiler that runs on the sparcs. 
Its not quite as comprehensive as pixie -- all it reports is instruction
counts, not categorized by instruction type memory reference, etc.  We
have used in on a variety of systems including the X11 server and our
own systems (FIELD/GARDEN) so it is fairly robust (I wouldn't be 
surprised if there were a few bugs left however).

It reports instruction counts by file, function, and line (if the program
is compiled -g), reporting the highest N counts of each type at the end
if desired.  FIELD provides a graphical browsing interface to this
(as well as prof, gprof, our modified gprof (which does line profiling),
and pixie) as part of its tool support.

Iprof (my name for the profiler) is available (with minimal doc) via
anonymous ftp at 128.148.31.66 if you want to give it a try.

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From: mark@hubcap.clemson.edu (Mark Smotherman)

I had a student (now gone) do a Cypress pipeline simulator a year or
so ago; recently a few bugs have cropped up.  I currently have another
student in the process of correcting it (albeit, slowly).  I can supply
you the code and the bug list, if you like.

I also worked with another student (also gone) who did a pixie-like code
instrumentation tool for SPARC.  The code is available from his
committee chair: grossman@cs.clemson.edu.  I believe it is exactly
what you want.  Ask for the DSIC tool developed by David Cook.

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From: kenji@Corp.Sun.COM (Kenji Armstrong (SPARC Applications Engineer))

	You may have this information already, but there exists a
program called SPARCsim which is sold by Sun which will produce a
detailed profile of a program including information on cycle and
instruction count.  Contact Jim Ting (jting@Corp.Sun.Com 415-336-0860)
for more information.  He is the Marketing person for this product.  I
believe this will do what you need to do.