Hi, Mikhail, I am happy to receive your letter. Nowadays I looked though many performance monitor tools, such as oprofile, perfctr, papi, and at last i want to use perfctr or papi. Papi is more user-friendly than perfctr, and have been used by many tools. This is what i thought about the limitations that you listed:
1. En, I have considered about this problem. We have to install a kernel patch first. Luckily, both perfctr and papi provide kernel-patches. 2. I have no problem to work on a P4, and the only machine i have is a P4 because i am a student, so I have no money to buy other kind of machine. 3. Unluckily, papi or perfctr now only works on linux platform. But it`s ok for me. Although working on all platform is important, it can be thought about later. Working on one platform is the first thing, and we should guarantee its efficiency, control its overhead.... The limitation is ok for me. I think a framework that works efficiently is important for me. And we can use better programming skills for future porting to other platforms..... -- Best Regards, Qiong,Zou
