[linuxtools-dev] Standard protocols/interfaces/formats for performance t

["Spear, Aaron" <aaron_spear@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

As some of you know, at Mentor Graphics we are currently working on
multi-core profiling products for embedded systems.  The focus currently
is using real-time trace data as the event source for analysis.  In the
future this will expand as we desire to be able to correlate analysis of
heterogeneous systems, e.g. embedded Linux + LTTng events on one
machine, correlated with real-time trace data collected from a bunch of
DSP's. 

Like the rest of you, we have spent much time in the past inventing
proprietary data collection frameworks, mechanisms and formats only to
eventually throw them away because a standard eventually emerges.  We
would like to stop the insanity.

So, as an FYI, I am planning to participate in a new tools
infrastructure working group under the auspices of the Multi-core
association (http://www.multicore-association.org).  The working group
aims to:

1.  Identify common needs, functionality, and opportunities for
information sharing between performance analysis tools.
2.  Discussion on identifying sharable components between performance
analysis tools.
3.  Discussion on metadata dimensions of interest for standardization
(e.g., code, space, metric, time, state)

Along those lines, we (Mentor) have a need for a protocol to connect to
remote trace collectors and configure trace triggering/collection, and
then efficiently download lots of binary trace data.  Sound familiar?  

TCF is an obvious choice for this as various companies are already using
it for this purpose from what I have observed.

So, to my point:
-What protocols are currently in use that we might consider as a
starting point?  I see that the linuxtools project apparently has one
for transferring LTTng event data.  Are there any docs for this
protocol?

-Is there any other company with a proprietary protocol that would
consider donating it to a standardization effort? (some one else who
also desires to end the insanity :-)

-file formats: event log file formats is another obvious candidate for
standardization.  Mentor has a file format we use that was inspired by
LTTng's format but is optimized for extremely large real-time trace
logs.  I intend to throw this into the mix.  Any others we should think
about? (The LTTng format obviously...) 

Best regards,
Aaron

--
Aaron Spear      
Debug Tools Architect/Staff Engineer
Embedded Systems Division
Mentor Graphics Corporation
Office: 303-679-8457