Performance validation, evaluation and optimization all depend on measurement capabilities and precision. Recently it has become very difficult to instrument and measure performance indicators at the lowest levels of software. This is due to the bundling of increasing functionality into hardware and software, and the degrading effects caused by add-on measurement hardware and software. The industry trend has been to include instrumentation within products as they are being built, rather than trying to add complex tools after those products are built.

In the 1980’s, there were several attempts to include hardware instrumentation into processors, as part of the design. In the 1990’s, we saw hardware instrumentation included with processors produced in high volumes, and operating systems and development tools took advantage of that instrumentation. These additional capabilities have enabled hardware designers to check their design criteria against end-products, to make sure design assumptions were correct, and software designers to better measure the effects of their algorithms on actual systems, without requiring an EE degree or costly tools.

The future holds even more promise, making the performance validation and optimization process more automated and included in standard off-the shelf processors, rather than requiring pre-production test hardware or specialized test software. Hardware instrumentation has the capability to accelerate the development of more efficient and responsive software programs.

In this presentation, we will look at the history of processor instrumentation, we will provide hints about the futures, and we will give a few examples of what has worked well. We will summarize the benefits that are achievable today and what benefits can be expected in the future.