sysperfana/perfinvestigator/com.nokia.carbide.cpp.pi.doc.user/html/concepts/overview/overview.htm
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Overview</title>
<link href="../../../book.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>
<h2>Overview</h2>
<p>The Performance Investigator is a software performance measurement tool. The
Performance Investigator collects run-time information from your application
and other software running on a Symbian OS enabled device, such as a Nokia S60
phone.. The recorded information is then analyzed in the Performance
Investigator analyzer software running on a PC.</p>
<p>Performance Investigator currently supports the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Nokia devices running S60 3.0 and 3.1 </li>
<li>SEMC devices running UIQ 3.0</li>
<li>Symbian TechView for Symbian OS 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, and 9.5</li>
</ul>
<p>The Performance Investigator collects performance data. It interrupts
software execution at regular intervals and copies to memory the contents of
some processor registers and the results of some Symbian OS calls.</p>
<p>The Performance Investigator contains two main parts:</p>
<ul>
<li>First, on the target device is a user application called the Profiler.
Installed with the Profiler is a device driver component that collects
information from low-level (kernel and hardware-level) sources that are not
generally accessed by application software. The Profiler acts as an
interface to the device driver component and is required for its
configuration, activation, and deactivation.</li>
<li>Second, on the PC there is Performance Investigator code integrated with
Carbide.c++. This software consists of an importer for processing profiler
data and the Analyzer, which provides a user-friendly way to examine and
analyze the run-time performance information.</li>
</ul>
<p>The following figure illustrates the basic scenario to gather and analyze
software performance data. The target device contains the actual performance
measurement instrumentation referred to as the Profiler. The data file imported
by Carbide.c++ is analyzed on a PC workstation independent of the target
device.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="../../images/overview.png" width="537"
height="336"></p>
<p class="figure">Figure 1. Performance Investigator Tool: profiler and
analyzer</p>
<p>Performance measurements follow a pattern in which separate performance
related activities are recorded to a profiler data file within the target
device as distinct traces. Each trace represents an independent performance
characteristic of the target device. When the profiler data file is imported by
Carbide.c++, more information can be derived from the traces. Each trace can be
independently analyzed. Furthermore, information gathered from the software at
compile-time can be used in the analysis in order to exploit the
cross-relations between elements of information available exclusively at
run-time or at compile-time.</p>
<p><strong>Related references </strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="sw_performance.htm">Software Performance</a></li>
<li><a href="../../reference/profiler/profiler.htm">Profiler</a></li>
<li><a href="../../reference/analyzer/analyser.htm">Analyzer</a></li>
<li><a href="../../reference/abbrev.htm">Acronyms</a></li>
</ul>
<div id="footer">
Copyright © 2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies). All rights
reserved. <br>
License: <a
href="http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html">http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html</a></div>
</body>
</html>