About SamplingAbout SamplingUse the non-intrusive, instruction-address sampling collector to collect, analyze, and display system-wide software performance data. Use the collected data to identify the critical processes, threads, modules, functions, and lines of code running on your system.
During sampling, the VTune(TM) Performance Analyzer monitors all the software executing on your system including the operating system, JIT-compiled Java* applications, and device drivers. Sampling does not modify your binary files or executables in order to monitor the performance of your application. The VTune analyzer analyzes the collected samples and displays the hotspots or bottlenecks in the Hotspot view. You can drill down from the hotspots to the source or assembly code. View the source causing the hotspots and get advice on how you can modify your code to remove the bottlenecks and improve the performance of your application.
Use the Event-based sampling (EBS) mechanism to periodically collect a sample of active instruction addresses after a specified number of processor events.
You can create an Activity
and collect sampling data by configuring the sampling collector using
the Sampling
Wizard 
or sampling
collector command line options.
tipFor the command line help on the sampling collector configuration options, type in: vtl -help -c sampling.
For the command line help on the sampling view options, type in: vtl -help -v sampling.
NoteView the manual page for sampling for the brief reference on sampling data collector configuration and view options: man sampling OR: man 7 sampling.
Click the following buttons for more information about sampling:
Before you begin
Tips
How do I...?
How
does it work?
Sampling toolbar
and pop-up menu
Troubleshooting
last updated: June 10, 2009