The authors present a postcompiler program manipulation tool called Dyninst, which provides a C++ class library for program instrumentation. Using this library, it is possible to instrument and modify application programs during execution. A unique feature of this library is that it permits machine-independent binary instrumentation programs to be written. The authors describe the interface that a tool sees when using this library. They also discuss three simple tools built using this interface: a utility to count the number of times a function is called, a program to capture the output of an already running program to a file, and an implementation of conditional breakpoints. For the conditional breakpoint example, the authors show that by using their interface compared with gdb, they are able to execute a program with conditional breakpoints up to 900 times faster.
Processor speed continues to increase faster than the speed of access to main memory, making effective use of memory caches more important. Information about an application's interaction with the cache is therefore critical to performance tuning. To be most useful, tools that measure this information should relate it to the source code level data structures in an application. We describe how to gather such information by using hardware performance counters to sample cache miss addresses, and present a new tool named Cache Scope that does this using the Intel Itanium 2 performance monitors. We present experimental results concerning Cache Scope's accuracy and perturbation of cache behavior. We also describe a case study of using Cache Scope to tune two applications, achieving 24% and 19% reductions in running time.
ne of the biggest impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on HR is and will continue to be around performance management. Adobe showed us years ago that performance management is not just a one-time discussion at the end of the year, but rather an ongoing, datadriven conversation. Variations of that approach are being recognized by an increasing number of companies that understand the need for continuous touch points, more real-time feedback so employees receive the positive recognition they deserve as well as constructive feedback when appropriate.
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