User guide

Profiling Execution Performance

Profiling C Code

To use the GNU profiler, you must compile and link your program with the profiling library,

execute the program to generate a gmon.out profile data file, and run gprof to parse the

profile data. The following sections describe how to accomplish the tasks.

To collect profiling data:

1. Switch to the Nios II C/C++ perspective, if necessary.

2. Right-click your project in the Nios II C/C++ Projects view, and then click System

Library Properties.

3. In the Properties dialog box, click System Library.

4. Turn on Link with profiling library.

6. Click OK.

7. Right-click your project in the Nios II C/C++ Projects view, point to Run As, and

then click Nios II Hardware.

After program execution completes, the file <project directory>/<build configuration

directory>/gmon.out contains the profiling information.

Note: Execution must return from main()

to create the file; if you terminate the run or

debug session, all profiling information is lost.

To analyze profiling data:

The nios2-elf-gprof utility converts the binary gmon.out data file and displays the

profiling information in a readable format. You can run the nios2-elf-gprof utility

automatically with the Profiling perspective in the Nios II IDE.

To view the profiling data, perform the following steps:

1. In the Nios II C/C++ Projects view, locate the generated gmon.out file in the

<build configuration directory> (typically Release or Debug) .

2. Double-click the gmon.out file to automatically switch to the Profiling perspective

and display the gmon.out data.

You can also run the nios2-elf-gprof utility from the command line.