Intel® VTune™ Amplifier 2018 Help

Getting Started with Intel® VTune™ Amplifier 2018 for Linux* OS

Intel® VTune™ Amplifier can be installed on Windows*, macOS*, and Linux* platforms and used for analysis of local and remote target systems. Use this tool to analyze the algorithm choices, find serial and parallel code bottlenecks, understand where and how your application can benefit from available hardware resources, and speed up the execution. The , available from the VTune Amplifier Welcome page, is a great place to discover the best analysis type to run for your use case.

Before running a detailed analysis with Intel VTune Amplifier, consider using one of the following tools as quick ways to discover untapped performance and guide you to the best analysis to run next. The tools are available bundled with Intel Parallel Studio or as free downloads from the Intel Developer Zone website.

VTune Amplifier is available as a standalone product as well as part of the following suites:

Visit the VTune Amplifier training page for videos, webinars, and more to help you get started.

Note

Starting with Intel VTune Amplifier 2018 version, product help, tutorials, and Release Notes are available online only from the Intel Software Documentation Library in the Intel Developer Zone (IDZ). You can also download an offline version of the product help either from IDZ or from the Intel® Software Development Products Registration Center.

Prerequisites

  • For system requirements, see the product Release Notes.

  • For hardware event-based sampling analysis, make sure you have the sampling driver installed on the system you want to analyze. Note that for Linux targets the sampling driver detects the kernel update and automatically attempts to rebuild and load the driver at the boot time. If, for some reasons, the sampling driver cannot be installed, the VTune Amplifier automatically enables driverless Perf*-based collection providing limited event-based sampling analysis options.

  • For remote analysis, set up your target Linux* or Android* system.

Step 1: Start the VTune Amplifier

  1. Set up the environment variables:

    • csh/tcsh users: source <install_dir>/amplxe-vars.csh

    • bash users: source <install_dir>/amplxe-vars.sh

    By default, the <install_dir> is:

    • For root users: /opt/intel/vtune_amplifier_2018

    • For non-root users: $HOME/intel/vtune_amplifier_2018

    • With Intel System Studio: /opt/intel/system_studio_2018/vtune_amplifier_2018

  2. Launch the VTune Amplifier:

    • For standalone GUI interface, run the amplxe-gui command.

    • For command line interface, run the amplxe-cl command.

Step 2: Set Up the Analysis Target

  1. Build your target application in the Release mode with all optimizations enabled.

  2. Create a VTune Amplifier project:

    1. Click the menu button in the right corner and go to New > Project... .

    2. Specify the project name and location in the Create Project dialog box.

  3. In the Analysis Target tab, select a target system and an analysis target type.

  4. Configure your target: application location, parameters, and search directories (if required).

Step 3: Configure Analysis

  1. Switch to the Analysis Type tab.

  2. From the left pane, select an analysis type applicable to your platform and configure analysis options in the right pane.

    Tip

    Use the Find Your Analysis guide, available from the VTune Amplifier Welcome screen, for help picking your starting point for analysis based on your use case.

  3. Click the Start button on the right to launch the analysis.

Step 4: View and Analyze Performance Data

When data collection completes, the VTune Amplifier opens the result in the default viewpoint, which is a preset configuration of windows for an analysis result. You may switch between different viewpoint to analyze the data from different perspectives using different sets of performance metrics.

Start your analysis with the Summary window to get an overview of the application performance and then switch to other windows to explore the performance deeper at the granularity of function, source line and so on.

Training and Documentation

Document

Description

Online Training

The online training site is an excellent resource for learning VTune Amplifier basics with Getting Started guides, videos, tutorials, webinars and technical articles.

Intel VTune Amplifier Tutorials

Tutorials show you how to use basic VTune Amplifier features. VTune Amplifier tutorials guide a new user through basic walkthrough operations with a short sample. The tutorials provide an excellent foundation before you read the VTune Amplifier help.

Sample code is typically installed to <install-dir>/samples/<locale>/<programming_language>.

VTune Amplifier sample code and corresponding tutorials are also available at https://software.intel.com/en-us/product-code-samples

Intel VTune Amplifier Cookbook

Performance analysis cookbook that contains recipes identifying and solving the most popular performance problems with the help of VTune Amplifier's analysis types.

Release Notes

The Release Notes document contains the most up-to-date information about the product, including a product description, technical support, and known limitations and issues.

This document also contains system requirements for installing the product. Before installation, the Release Notes document is located at the root level (same level as the installation script/executable) of the installation download package.

Installation Guide

The Installation Guide contains basic installation instructions for VTune Amplifier and post-installation configuration instructions for the various drivers and collectors.

The latest Installation Guide can be found on the Intel® Developer Zone (Intel® DZ) website.

Intel VTune Amplifier Help

The help is the primary documentation for the VTune Amplifier.

SEP User's Guide

This document provides instructions on using the VTune Amplifier sampling collector (SEP) targeted for hardware event-based sampling analysis on resource-restricted systems.

EMON User's Guide

This document provides instructions on using the EMON command line tool, which is used to specify performance events, allocate resources, and retrieve event counts in processors and chipsets.

Intel Processor Event Reference

This help provides reference information for Intel processor events used by the VTune Amplifier for hardware event-based sampling analysis. Most of this information is drawn from Intel processor information sources on the web.

Command Line Help

You can access general help for VTune Amplifier command line interface by entering the following command line:

  • amplxe-cl -help for help on basic action options

  • amplxe-cl -help <action-option> for help on a particular action option and its knobs

Web Resources

Legal Information

Intel, the Intel logo, and VTune are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks, or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

OpenCL and the OpenCL logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. used by permission from Khronos.

© Intel Corporation