Overview of the QNX System Profiler

The QNX System Profiler works with the QNX Neutrino instrumented kernel (procnto-instr) to provide insight into a target system's events and activities. You can think of this IDE tool as a software logic analyzer. Like the Application Profiler, the System Profiler can help pinpoint areas that need improvement, but at a system-wide level.

The QNX System Profiler perspective allows you to examine the data generated by kernel event traces. Using the various views, you can analyze how different processes and/or threads in your target system interact, which goes beyond traditional debugging by giving you process- and thread-level details.

You might use this perspective to solve such problems as:

• IPC bottlenecks (by observing the flow of messages among threads)
• resource contention (by watching threads as they change states)
• cache coherency in a multi-core machine (by seeing how threads migrate between CPUs or cores)