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DS-5 OR RVDS, which one to use for profiling code

John Doe
Note: This was originally posted on 13th June 2012 at http://forums.arm.com

I used RVDS in the past and it was great for profiling test code. I was able to see how many cycles each instruction takes, data hazards etc. I was very satisfied with it. BUT, RVDS was pretty buggy in that regard: there was no way to profile code that uses unaligned memory access (it just hangs, there was no reply from arm at all if there was a way to fix it), and profiling for neon code was non-existent (every neon instruction takes 1 cycle in RVDS profiler).

I tried to use DS5 trial and CE version and wasn't even able to figure out how to even do any profiling at all. Debugging ... I must be dreaming, it was world of pain to get anything working and I think it wasn't working properly (followed all kinds of guides, pinned at the top of the forum for example). It's nothing even close to experience that I had with RVDS: I had profiling results within 20 minutes after I registered for trial. If it matters, even for android my primary dev environment is VS2009 and I debug native code on windows mobile devices if I need to, all that clunky eclipse feels like ... **censored** :)


THE QUESTION:

should I keep on wasting time trying to get DS5 profiling working (I would like to be able to profile on emulator, or on real device), Or its Streamline will be useless for me: does it show the same detail as profiler that comes with RVDS or not? For some reason I think that Streamline is more like profiler that comes with XCode and iPhone sdk: it shows sampling usage of the full app but not opcode level profiling info like RVDS (e.g. I could see each instruction and how much cycles it took and any register waits if there were any).

If DS5 isn't good for that, maybe somebody can recommend me alternative solution? My main target is the android phone, although I build my code almost for all devices that run on ARM.
Basically, what's the best tool for profiling arm code? I would prefer some RTSMs so I could profile for different CPUs (like with RVDS), but if there is no good alternative I could as well buy any development board or anything that could provide me opcode level profiling info. Please advise anybody! Thanks

Ideally, I would like something similar to RVDS but fully working: 1) unaligned memory access fixed, preferably running some kind of OS so that 2) I could use files that I use for testing (I had 250MB input files that I passed for my test runs and in RVDS I had to embed all that data to final executable, which was really annoying compared to all platforms where I run my code and where I was able to use files one way or the other). 3) Normal neon profiling info, and not that 1cpi nonsense that RVDS profiler shows. Something similar to ARM Cortex-A8 cycle counter online tool
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  • Arm Employee Badge
    Note: This was originally posted on 18th June 2012 at http://forums.arm.com


    Now I understand that I need full rebuild to get it running. Is that correct? Or I simply can build a kernel and copy it to device and boot my kernel instead of the original one.
    ...
    If it's not  trivial to get Streamline on regular phone, what's the recommended HW to  work with Streamline? I guess, it would be best if I could use some  android phone for that so I could profile entire app instead of limited  test apps.


    It's definitely non-trivial.  It's possible that some production phone has a kernel that is correctly configured, but rebuilding and replacing the kernel with one correctly configured for gator (the target part of Streamline) is probably the only way to be sure.  Also building gator requires matching kernel headers that may be difficult to find for a production phone.  Installing/running gator requires root access. The details of how to copy the kernel, etc. to the phone will vary from phone to phone.

    It's almost certainly easier to use Android on some development board.  Linaro has Android for at least i.MX53, Pandaboard, Snowball and Origen.  There are probably many other boards with Android support that I'm not as familiar with.


    Is there any phone that has compatible gpu with streamline?


    They are not phones but all of those boards I mention above have a GPU.  With the correct drivers, Streamline can do GPU profiliing on Mali GPUs (for example, Snowball and Origen). [But I'm getting a bit "outside my area of expertise" here.  (That's something my father used to say when he didn't know what the hell he talking about.)]
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  • Arm Employee Badge
    Note: This was originally posted on 18th June 2012 at http://forums.arm.com


    Now I understand that I need full rebuild to get it running. Is that correct? Or I simply can build a kernel and copy it to device and boot my kernel instead of the original one.
    ...
    If it's not  trivial to get Streamline on regular phone, what's the recommended HW to  work with Streamline? I guess, it would be best if I could use some  android phone for that so I could profile entire app instead of limited  test apps.


    It's definitely non-trivial.  It's possible that some production phone has a kernel that is correctly configured, but rebuilding and replacing the kernel with one correctly configured for gator (the target part of Streamline) is probably the only way to be sure.  Also building gator requires matching kernel headers that may be difficult to find for a production phone.  Installing/running gator requires root access. The details of how to copy the kernel, etc. to the phone will vary from phone to phone.

    It's almost certainly easier to use Android on some development board.  Linaro has Android for at least i.MX53, Pandaboard, Snowball and Origen.  There are probably many other boards with Android support that I'm not as familiar with.


    Is there any phone that has compatible gpu with streamline?


    They are not phones but all of those boards I mention above have a GPU.  With the correct drivers, Streamline can do GPU profiliing on Mali GPUs (for example, Snowball and Origen). [But I'm getting a bit "outside my area of expertise" here.  (That's something my father used to say when he didn't know what the hell he talking about.)]
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