13.12.2022 
This blog will give you a brief overview of profiling C and C++ applications. Additionally, it will lay before you all of the tools available, with the purpose of aiding you in choosing the right tools at the right times.
Blog Archives
Heaptrack v1.3.0 Release
Version 1.3.0 of the KDE Heaptrack project was just released by KDAB’s Milian Wolff. Heaptrack is a heap memory profiler on Linux-based operating systems. It can help you find hotspots that need to be optimized for reducing memory usage, memory leaks, allocation hotspots, and temporary allocations. Included in this release is a special new feature […]
Hotspot: How const Can Improve Performance
Some time ago, I noticed that a unit test was quite slow, using 100% CPU for a number of seconds at one point in the test. I used perf and KDAB’s Hotspot to record and examine where the CPU cycles were spent in that unit test, and I quickly noticed that a lot of time […]
Full Stack Tracing, Part 3 Interpreting traces
This is the third and last installment of our series about full stack tracing. If you haven’t read them yet, you’ll probably want to check out the introduction and tool setup portions first. In this blog, we’re going to focus on visualizing and interpreting full stack traces. At this point, we’re going to assume that […]
Full Stack Tracing Part 2 Environment setup
If you’ve read the first article in this series, you’ll know what full stack tracing is and why you definitely want it. This time, we’ll show you how to setup full stack tracing on your Linux system. There are two steps – first get everything configured to capture a trace, and then view and interpret […]
KDE’s Akademy 2020 – A Quick Summary
What is Akademy? Akademy is the yearly conference for the KDE community, which is a community devoted to creating free software for desktop and mobile. Typically, Akademy takes place in a different city each year. However, due to the pandemic, the conference was online this time around. September 4-11 marked the dates of Akademy 2020. […]
Heaptrack Version 1.2.0 Released Maintenance release of the fast Linux heap memory profiler
We have just released version 1.2.0 of Heaptrack, the fast heap memory profiler for C++/Linux applications. A bit of Background The Heaptrack fast heap memory profiler allows you to track all heap memory allocations at run-time. Afterwards, you can use the accompanying GUI tool to find optimization opportunities in your code by analyzing the recorded […]
Hotspot Version 1.3.0 Released Overview of New Features and Improvements
We are pleased to announce a new release of our Hotspot Linux perf performance analysis GUI, Hotspot version 1.3.0! Hotspot is a replacement for perf reportthat takes a perf.data file, parses and evaluates its contents, and then displays the result in a graphical form. You can read a bit more about Hotspot here: https://www.kdab.com/hotspot-gui-linux-perf-profiler/ Overview […]
Update to Linux perf report Improved handling of inlined frames
Linux perf is an immensely useful and powerful tool suite for profiling of C/C++ applications. I have used it extensively and successfully on various customer projects, both for desktop applications as well as automotive or industrial projects targeting low-end embedded Linux targets running on ARM hardware. The biggest problem with perf really is its usability, […]
Hotspot v1.1.0 adds timeline and recording features New release of the GUI for the Linux perf profiler
Close to three months after the initial hotspot release, I’m happy to announce the release of version 1.1.0. Quick recap: Hotspot is a graphical frontend to the Linux perf profiler suite. It allows you to visually analyze perf.data files with the built-in Flame Graph and the Bottom-Up, Top-Down, or Caller-Callee data tables. It is a […]