IA-32 Intel® Architecture Optimization
xxiv
target the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture and the Pentium M processor
microarchitecture.
Tuning Your Application
Tuning an application for high performance on any IA-32 processor
requires understanding and basic skills in:
• IA-32 architecture
• C and Assembly language
• the hot-spot regions in your application that have significant impact
on software performance
• the optimization capabilities of your compiler
• techniques to evaluate the application’s performance
The Intel
®
VTune™ Performance Analyzer can help you analyze and
locate hot-spot regions in your applications. On the Pentium 4, Intel
®
Xeon
®
and Pentium M processors, this tool can monitor an application
through a selection of performance monitoring events and analyze the
performance event data that is gathered during code execution.
This manual also describes information that can be gathered using the
performance counters through Pentium 4 processor’s performance
monitoring events.
For VTune Performance Analyzer order information, see the web page:
h
ttp://developer.intel.com
About This Manual
In this document, the reference “Pentium 4 processor” refers to
processors based on the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture. Currently this
includes the Intel Pentium 4 processor and Intel Xeon processor. Where
appropriate, differences between Pentium 4 processor and Intel Xeon
processor are noted.