HP PAK Performance Analysis Tools User's Guide

Glossary 39
Glossary
Percent cutoff A specification
that restricts entries in a Puma
analysis to procedures consuming
more than a certain amount of
execution time. By default, the
percent cutoff is 0, which, in effect,
instructs Puma to include
information about every procedure
that consumes 0% or more of the
execution time (that is, every
procedure that occurred in any
stacktrace that Puma recorded).
Performance statistics A set of
metrics that Puma collects from a
program run to aid in analyzing
performance. These include time
spent in user space ("user cycles"),
time spent in system space
("system cycles"), major page
faults, minor page faults, socket
messages sent, socket messages
received, signals received, files
open, page swaps, and characters
(bytes) of I/O.
Play back To use data
accumulated while monitoring a
program to examine the sequence
of the execution of the program.
Procedure cutoff A cutoff that
excludes calls beneath a given
procedure from the analysis.
Program call tree A graphical
image of the currently active stack
trace and the siblings of each
procedure in that stack trace.
Program counter A register in
the CPU that contains the address
of the next instruction to be
executed.
Program flow The procedure
path through which the execution
of a program has gone to bring the
program counter to its current
location.
Process A binary executed by the
CPU. Each process is executed
independently.
Recursion Any situation in which
procedure calls are circular; for
example, when a procedure calls
itself, when a procedure calls the
procedure that called it, or when a
procedure calls farther back up the
call chain.