Hardware Event Count is a performance metric used by the Intel® VTune™ Amplifier when interpreting event-based sampling analysis results. The Hardware Event Count metric shows the event count for all collected processor events. While the Hardware Sample Count metric provides the actual number of samples collected for an event, Hardware Event Counts metric estimates the number of times this event occurred during the collection (see Sample After Value).
To view the Hardware Event Count data, choose the Hardware Events viewpoint. Both grid and timeline views display Hardware Event Count by Hardware Event Type. Use the Hardware Event Count drop-down menu in the Timeline legend area to select an event of interest for the Thread area. The default event varies for different analysis types. VTune Amplifier shows the number of times this event occurred during the thread execution. Hover over a bar to see hardware event count at each moment of time. The Hardware Event Type area shows the event count distribution during the target execution for each event.
In the example above, graphs in the Thread area show event count for the INST_RETIRED.ANY event, while the Hardware Event Type area shows graphs with application-level performance per event.