[PerfSuite-announce] PerfSuite 0.6.2a1 released

[<per...@li...>]

PerfSuite 0.6.2 alpha 1 is now available.

PerfSuite is a collection of performance analysis software that
can assist with a variety of methods and techniques useful for
application software optimization.  The current release provides
support for analysis with hardware performance counters on Linux.

This is the first alpha release of the next version of PerfSuite, with
many updates and enhancements.  The package numbering remains at 0.6.x
as the current development remains focused primarily on measurement
through hardware performance counters and related capabilities.

The "alpha" label on PerfSuite releases indicates that they are in a
feature addition mode during which new features are added and evaluated.
Although unlikely, it is possible that features added during an alpha
cycle may be removed before the version moves to beta status.

Additionally, the alpha releases are very important in terms of early
exposure to systems in the field to help find and fix any problems that 
do not appear on our development platforms, so your input is valuable and
appreciated. If you're primarily interested in releases that are frozen 
in terms of APIs, command options, etc., you may prefer to use stable (or
beta) releases.  The current stable release of PerfSuite is version 0.6.1.

Here is an incomplete list of several of the user-visible enhancements in 
0.6.2a1 over prior releases.  Please see the ChangeLog for complete details.

o Expanded libpshwpc API:
  - new function calls provide access to performance counter data from
    within an application and associated inquiry functions.  You can
    read the current values and process them programmatically, providing
    greater flexibility in monitoring.

o New performance measurement layers:
  - new "perfmon" layer for IA-64 systems that accesses IA-64 hardware
    counters directly through the Perfmon performance monitoring subsystem.
    PerfSuite 0.6.2a1 supports libpfm-2.0 only; please refer to
    http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/perfmon/ for more on Perfmon.
    We expect to include libpfm-3.0 support later in the alpha cycle.
  - new "itimer" layer that enables profiling through interval timers in
    much the same way as profil() or gprof, but with the added flexibility
    of additional time domains, the ability to specify the profiling sample
    rate, and inclusion of shared libraries in the profile.

o Enhancements in the psrun command and underlying libraries:
  - substantial rewrite of psrun for efficiency and additional flexibility
  - psrun resource monitoring capability reimplemented completely.

o Enhancements in psprocess:
  - many new features in psprocess, including new output format compatible
    with GNU gprof, optional calibration mode for counting reports, validation
    of input documents, ability to read from standard input, and many more.
    psprocess has been updated to work with the new performance measurement
    layers described above.

The 0.6.2 version of PerfSuite has been under development for over a year
and should be rather stable, however you might want to maintain your current
installation side-by-side while working with 0.6.2 alpha 1.

URL: http://perfsuite.ncsa.uiuc.edu/download/
     http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/perfsuite/

Feedback, comments, problem reports are welcome.

Rick