The text below is just my rant about VTune.
If you are not in the mood, just skip.
If you think I am wrong, correct me.
I just started to use VTune recently, I was using DevPartner before. Also I had some contact with Quantify, but it didn’t like the idea of profiling largest COM app in the world…
So I fired up VTune and run simple test. It worked. It collected samples. It even created a call graph. And at that moment my woe began.
Actually, it’s amazing – VTune collects more information than DevPartner Pro, but manages to render it in a very clunky way.
A VTune’s UI suffers from information overload.
A ‘Graph’ tab in call graph is useless – it only shows actual performance numbers in tooltips, so you cannot navigate, say, to the next heaviest call at a glance. Yes I’ve checked call graph preferences. No use.
Hacks like ‘show slowest path to bottom’ only work if you have single well-defined bottleneck in your system. If you found any use for a ‘Graph’ tab, respond immediately – I want to know.
‘Call list’ tab saved the day for me, with some learning curve related to unfamiliar terms (Quiz: what is Edge time?)
Source code view doesn’t give per-line timing information as expected (for each line). VTune has this information but you can only view it if you go to the source file where this function resides.
Again, ‘Call list’ goes to the rescue. I can live with this…
To collect call graph info and performance sampling info, VTune actually runs your app twice – first to sample, then to collect call graph. These two results are not related and displayed separately. I have VSTE 2008, so I just don’t collect samples.
I cannot remove system DLLs from instrumentation – ‘only modules added by user can be removed’.
Yes, I can remove them from display, one at a time, for each run… This adds to a clutter. If there is a way to say ‘don’t show NTDLL.DLL in total list unless I tell you so’, I couldn’t find it.
The Tuning Assistant (much touted in the Tutorial) always ‘has no advice for the selected context’.
And, finally, the award:
Intel VTune 9.0 claims award for most useless tooltip of the year 2008!
