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European Conference on Parallel Processing

Euro-Par 2011: Euro-Par 2011: Parallel Processing Workshops pp 223–233Cite as

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Virtualizing Performance Counters

Virtualizing Performance Counters

  • Benjamin Serebrin30 &
  • Daniel Hecht30 
  • Conference paper
  • 2371 Accesses

  • 5 Citations

  • 1 Altmetric

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNTCS,volume 7155)

Abstract

Virtual machines are becoming commonplace as a stable and flexible platform to run many workloads. As developers continue to move more workloads into virtual environments, they need ways to analyze the performance characteristics of those workloads. However, performance efforts can be hindered because the standard profiling tools like VTune and the Linux Performance Counter Subsystem do not work in most modern hypervisors. These tools rely on CPUs’ hardware performance counters, which are not currently exposed to the guests by most hypervisors. This work discusses the challenges of performance counters due to the trap and emulate method of virtualization and the time sharing of physical CPUs among multiple virtual CPUs. We propose an approach to address these issues to provide useful and intuitive information about guest performance and the relative costs of virtualization overheads.

Keywords

  • Virtual Machine
  • Performance Counter
  • Guest Operating System
  • Branch Predictor
  • Core Cycle

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. VMware, USA

    Benjamin Serebrin & Daniel Hecht

Authors
  1. Benjamin Serebrin
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  2. Daniel Hecht
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Scilytics, Koellnerhofgasse 3/15A, 1010, Vienna, Austria

    Michael Alexander

  2. ICAR-CNR, Via P. Castellino, 111, 80131, Napoli, Italy

    Pasqua D’Ambra

  3. University of Amsterdam, 1090, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Adam Belloum

  4. Innovative Computing Laboratory, The University of Tennessee, USA

    George Bosilca

  5. Department of Experimental Medicine and Clinic, University Magna Græcia, 88100, Catanzaro, Italy

    Mario Cannataro

  6. Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, Italy

    Marco Danelutto

  7. Second University of Naples, Italy

    Beniamino Di Martino

  8. TU München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748, Garching, Germany

    Michael Gerndt

  9. Equipe Runtime, INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, 33405, Talence Cedex, France

    Emmanuel Jeannot & Raymond Namyst & 

  10. Equipe HIEPACS, INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, 33405, Talence Cedex, France

    Jean Roman

  11. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Computer Science and Mathematics Division, 37831-6164, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Stephen L. Scott

  12. Department of Scientific Computing, University of Vienna, Nordbergstr. 15/3C, 1090, Vienna, Austrial

    Jesper Larsson Traff

  13. Computer Science and Mathematics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 37831, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Geoffroy Vallée

  14. Technische Universität München, Germany

    Josef Weidendorfer

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Cite this paper

Serebrin, B., Hecht, D. (2012). Virtualizing Performance Counters. In: Alexander, M., et al. Euro-Par 2011: Parallel Processing Workshops. Euro-Par 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7155. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29737-3_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29737-3_26

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29736-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29737-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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