9.24.6 Profiling Capability

It is a performance hit to use gcc's profiling approach for this tiny target. Even more – jtag hardware facility does not perform any profiling functions. However we've got gdb's built-in simulator where we can do anything.

We define new section .profiler which holds all profiling information. We define new pseudo operation .profiler which will instruct assembler to add new profile entry to the object file. Profile should take place at the present address.

Pseudo operation format:

.profiler flags,function_to_profile [, cycle_corrector, extra]

where:

flags is a combination of the following characters:

s

function entry

x

function exit

i

function is in init section

f

function is in fini section

l

library call

c

libc standard call

d

stack value demand

I

interrupt service routine

P

prologue start

p

prologue end

E

epilogue start

e

epilogue end

j

long jump / sjlj unwind

a

an arbitrary code fragment

t

extra parameter saved (a constant value like frame size)

function_to_profile

a function address

cycle_corrector

a value which should be added to the cycle counter, zero if omitted.

extra

any extra parameter, zero if omitted.

For example:

     .global fxx
     .type fxx,@function
     fxx:
     .LFrameOffset_fxx=0x08
     .profiler "scdP", fxx     ; function entry.
     			  ; we also demand stack value to be saved
       push r11
       push r10
       push r9
       push r8
     .profiler "cdpt",fxx,0, .LFrameOffset_fxx  ; check stack value at this point
     					  ; (this is a prologue end)
     					  ; note, that spare var filled with
     					  ; the farme size
       mov r15,r8
     ...
     .profiler cdE,fxx         ; check stack
       pop r8
       pop r9
       pop r10
       pop r11
     .profiler xcde,fxx,3      ; exit adds 3 to the cycle counter
       ret                     ; cause 'ret' insn takes 3 cycles