Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE and Intel® VTune™ Amplifier for Systems Help

Preparing a Target Embedded Linux* System for Remote Analysis

Use the Intel® VTune™ Amplifier for Systems for performance analysis on Embedded Linux* systems, Wind River*, Yocto Project*, Tizen*, FreeBSD* and others.

Embedded device performance data can be collected remotely by installing the collectors on the embedded device and running the analysis from an instance of VTune Amplifier installed on the host system. This is useful when you want to collect performance information using the VTune Amplifier GUI and the pre-configured analysis types. Alternatively, hardware-based sampling data can be collected using a command-line collection tool that can be copied to a host system and viewed in the VTune Amplifier GUI. Use this type of data collection when space on the embedded device is limited or when only hardware event-based sampling data is required.

Note

Root access to the operating system kernel is required to install the collectors and drivers required for performance analysis using VTune Amplifier.

There are two ways to enable performance analysis on an embedded device:

Tip

A tutorial with detailed steps for setting up Yocto Project on a MinnowBoard Max* device is available in the <install-dir>/documentation/en/tutorials/find_hotspots_lin directory.

Using the Intel System Studio Integration Layer

Note

The Intel System Studio integration layer works for embedded systems with Wind River Linux or Yocto Project installed.

The Intel System Studio integration layer allows the Intel System Studio products to be fully integrated with a target operating system by building the drivers and corresponding target packages into the operating system image automatically. Use this option in the case where a platform build engineer has control over the kernel sources and signature files, but the application engineer does not. The platform build engineer can integrate the product drivers with the target package and include them in the embedded device image that is delivered to the application engineer.

1. Install Intel System Studio.

Install Intel System Studio using the installer GUI.

Tip

If you already have Wind River Linux and Workbench* installed on your host system, select the Integrate to Wind River* Linux and Wind River* Workbench checkbox when installing Intel System Studio. If you install Intel System Studio before installing Wind River Linux and Workbench, ignore the automatic integration step during installation and manually integrate after installing Wind River Linux and Workbench.

2. Install the Intel System Studio integration layer.

  1. Copy the integration layer from the Intel System Studio installation folder to the target operating system development folder.

  2. Run the post-installation script: wr-iss-<version>/<OS>-setup/postinst_<OS>_iss.sh <ISS_BASE_dir>

Note

This step can be completed as part of the Intel System Studio installation for Wind River Linux system integration. If you already have Wind River Linux and Workbench installed on your host system, select the Integrate to Wind River* Linux and Wind River* Workbench checkbox when installing Intel System Studio. If you install Intel System Studio before installing Wind River Linux and Workbench, ignore the automatic integration step during installation and manually integrate after installing Wind River Linux and Workbench.

3. Build the recipe that includes the appropriate VTune Amplifier package.

  1. Add the path to the wr-iss-<version> to the bblayers.conf file:

    BBLAYERS= "\

    ...

    <OS_INSTALL_DIR>/wr-iss-<version>\

    ...

    "

  2. Add the VTune Amplifier recipes to conf/local.conf. Possible recipes include intel-iss-vtune-target for remote command line and GUI usage mode or intel-iss-vtune-sep-target for command line hardware event-based sampling analysis. For more information about these collection methods, see Remote Analysis Workflow for Linux Systems.

Note

This step can be completed when creating a new Wind River Linux platform project using Wind River Workbench.

4. Build the target operating system.

Build the target operating system, which will complete the integration of the VTune Amplifier collectors and drivers.

5. Flash the operating system to the target embedded device.

After flashing the operating system to the target embedded device, ensure that the appropriate VTune Amplifier drivers are present. For more information, see Building and Managing the Sampling Driver.

6. Run the analysis on the target embedded device.

Depending on the recipe chosen, the analysis is either run from the host system using an SSH connection or using the SEP commands.

Use the following steps to run the analysis from the host system:

  1. Set up a password-less SSH access to the target using RSA keys.

  2. Specify your target application and remote system.

  3. Choose an analysis type.

  4. Configure the analysis type.

  5. Run the analysis from the host.

Use the information available in the Sampling Enabling Product User's Guide to run the SEP commands. The guide is available from <install-dir>/documentation/en/SEP_Users_Guide.pdf.

7. View results in the VTune Amplifier GUI

View the collected data on the host.

Examples

Configuring Wind River Linux with the Intel System Studio Integration Layer

Configuring Yocto Project* with the Intel System Studio Integration Layer

Using the Bundled Intel VTune Amplifier Installation Packages

You can build the appropriate drivers and install the VTune Amplifier collectors on your kernel image manually with a command line. This option requires root access to the configured kernel source.

1. Install Intel System Studio.

Install Intel System Studio using the installer GUI.

2. Copy the target package to the target embedded Linux device.

Copy the appropriate target package archive to the target device using ftp, sftp, or scp. The following target packages are available from <install-dir>/target/linux32[64]:

  • linux32/vtune_amplifier_target_sep_x86.tgz - provides hardware event-based sampling collector only (SEP) for x86 systems

  • linux32/vtune_amplifier_target_x86.tgz - provides all VTune Amplifier collectors for x86 systems

  • linux64/vtune_amplifier_target_sep_x86_64.tgz - provides hardware event-based sampling collector only (SEP) for 64-bit systems

  • linux64/vtune_amplifier_target_x86_64.tgz - provides all VTune Amplifier collectors for 64-bit systems

Note

  • Use both *_x86 and *_x86_64 packages if you plan to run and analyze 32-bit processes on 64-bit systems.

  • The vtune_amplifier_target_sep_x86.tgz and vtune_amplifier_target_sep_x86_64.tgz packages do not support remote data collection using the VTune Amplifier GUI. Use the linux32/vtune_amplifier_target_x86.tgz or linux64/vtune_amplifier_target_x86_64.tgz package for remote data collection support.

  • Remote collectors are also available in the <Intel_System_studio_install_dir>/targets/ system_studio_target.tgz.

3. Extract the package on the target embedded Linux device.

Extract the package to the /opt/intel directory.

4. [Optional] Build the sampling driver on the target (A) or host (B) system.

This option is only required if the drivers were not built as part of the collector installation. The installation output should inform you if building the sampling driver is required.

The drivers are built either on the target system or on the host system, depending on compiler toolchain availability:

A. If the compiler toolchain is available on the target system:

  1. On the target embedded device, build the driver from the <install-dir>/sepdk/src directory using the ./build-driver command.
  2. Load the driver into the kernel using the ./insmod-sep command.

B. If the compiler toolchain is not available on the target system:

  1. On the host system, cross-build the driver using the driver source from the target package sepdk/src directory with the ./build-driver command. Provide the cross-compiler (if necessary) and the target kernel source tree for the build.
  2. Copy the sepdk/src folder to the target system.
  3. Load the driver into the kernel using the ./insmod-sep command.

For more information, see Building and Managing the Sampling Driver.

6. Run the analysis on the target embedded device.

Depending on the target installation package chosen, the analysis is either run from the host system using an SSH connection or using the SEP commands.

Use the following steps to run the analysis from the host system:

  1. Set up a password-less SSH access to the target using RSA keys.

  2. Specify your target application and remote system.

  3. Choose an analysis type.

  4. Configure the analysis type.

  5. Run the analysis from the host.

Use the information available in the Sampling Enabling Product User's Guide to run the SEP commands. The guide is available from <install-dir>/documentation/en/SEP_Users_Guide.pdf.

7. View results in the VTune Amplifier GUI

View the collected data on the host.

Example

Configuring Yocto Project with Intel VTune Amplifier Target Packages