Hotspots Browser

The Hotspots Browser displays function hotspots in your application and allows you to drill down to the application, process, thread and module levels. The Hotspots Browser is comprised of two panels:
  • The left panel displays the Process Hierarchy Tree.
  • The right panel displays the Function Hotspots Table which shows a list of function hotspots for the selected element in the Process Hierarchy Tree.
The Process Hierarchy Tree has two root nodes:
  • Whole System: contains all the processes running on the system at the time of the performance run.
  • My Hotpsots Filters: contains user defined filters
Under Whole System there are two predefined filters:
  • My Application: contains the processes that have been identified as being part of your application.
  • Other Processes: contains all other processes running on the system during the performance run.

The CPU time is represented by a relative percentage and a ticks value. A tick represents a sample of the system taken by tprof (on AIX) or OProfile (on Linux on Power System). By default the ticks number is not displayed. To enable the display of ticks first open the preferences dialog from the main menu at Window > Preferences, then navigate to the preferences page found under Performance Tuning > Appearance. Under Timing Data select show both percentage and ticks.

When you select an element in the Process Hierarchy Tree, for example a process, the hot functions in that process are displayed in the Function Hotspots Table. By default the functions are sorted by the percentage column. You can sort by other columns by clicking on the column title.
Column Description
Recommendation Shows a light bulb if a recommendation is detected for the function.
Function Shows the function name.
Hotness Shows the hotness of a function.
% Shows the percentage relative to the CPU time of parent filter in the Process Hierarchy Tree. Example: if you select My Application, the percentage is relative to the total CPU time sampled on My Application.
Source Shows the source file name that contains the function.
Module Shows the module name that the function belongs to.
Hover over a column to see tooltip for the column. For the Recommendations column the tooltip shows the recommendation description. For the other columns the tooltip shows function name, full source name and module name, and the explanation of the percentage number.

Finding Functions by Name

The filter box above the table can be used to filter the contents of the table. As you type into the box the contents of the table are filtered and the part of each function name that matches the filter is highlighted. Two wildcards are accepted: '*' matches any sequence of characters and '?' matches a single character. Click the eraser icon in the filter box to clear the filter.

Breadcrumb Bar Navigation

To save screen space, you can hide the Process Hierarchy Tree panel and navigate the hierarchy using the breadcrumb bar. The breadcrumb bar is turned on/off by the toolbar button .

Click the arrow beside the breadcrumb item to show the hierarchy tree. The function table will be updated according to your selection.

Hotspots Filter

Custom filters can be created to focus on function hotspots you are interested in. A filter is shared by all Activities in a Session. To create a filter right click on any node in the tree and select Add Filter. The following filter criteria can be specified:

Filter Criteria Description
Process Type The type of process. Currently this is only used for querying processes related to your application
Process Name Name of the process
Process ID Process ID
Thread ID Thread ID
Module Module name
Function Function name
Source Source file name

Note: the filter currently only supports an exact string match.

Toolbar Buttons

Button Command Description
Toggle breadcrumb bar Show/hide breadcrumb bar.

Toolbar Menu

Command Description
Manage Hotspots Filters... Add new Hotspots filters, or manage existing filters you defined.
Preferences... Open the performance advisor appearance preference page.

Process Hierarchy Tree Context Menu

Command Context Description
Add Filter... Any element Create a new Hotspots filter.
Edit Filter... My Application, user defined Hotspots filter. Edit a filter
Copy Filter... My Application, user defined Hotspots filter. Copy a Hotspots filter.
Hide Filter User defined Hotspots filter. Hide a filter so it does not show in the Process Hierarchy Tree. You can show it again through using the Manage Hotspots Filter... action
Delete Filter User defined Hotspots filter. Delete a filter.
Manage Hotspots Filters... Any element. Create new Hotspots filters, or manage existing filters.
Preferences... Any element. Open performance tuning appearance preference page.

Function Hotspots Table Context Menu

Command Context Description
Open Source Function Open source for the function in Performance Source Viewer.
Show Callers/Callees Function Show the call stack for the selected function in the Invocations Browser.
Preferences... Function Open performance tuning appearance preference page.

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