hw_perf

macOS hardware CPU counter profiler. Analog of a perf stat from Linux. Based on a prototype created by ibireme.

Building from source

$ git clone https://github.com/bazhenov/hw_perf
$ cd hw_perf
$ make

Usage

Tracing requires root privileges.

profiling target process till the end:
```
# hw_perf -- target_process
```

profiling WindowServer for a 5 seconds:

# hw_perf -p `pgrep WindowServer` -- sleep 5
loaded db: icelake (Intel Ice Lake)
number of fixed counters: 4
number of configurable counters: 8
CPU tick frequency: 1000000000

  Perfomance counters stats for 'sleep 5'

  thread: 876

        62351 cycles         # CPU_CLK_UNHALTED.THREAD
        17467 instructions   # INST_RETIRED.ANY
         3505 branches       # BR_INST_RETIRED.ALL_BRANCHES
          265 branch-misses  # BR_MISP_RETIRED.ALL_BRANCHES
     0.001268 seconds elapsed

  thread: 2286

       223492 cycles         # CPU_CLK_UNHALTED.THREAD
       109630 instructions   # INST_RETIRED.ANY
        21596 branches       # BR_INST_RETIRED.ALL_BRANCHES
         1065 branch-misses  # BR_MISP_RETIRED.ALL_BRANCHES
     0.000881 seconds elapsed