Intel ARCHITECTURE IA-32 User Manual

Application Performance Tools A
A-9
Sampling
Sampling allows you to profile all active software on your system,
including operating system, device driver, and application software. It
works by occasionally interrupting the processor and collecting the
instruction address, process ID, and thread ID. After the sampling
activity completes, the VTune analyzer displays the data by process,
thread, software module, function, or line of source. There are two
methods for generating samples: Time-based sampling and Event-based
sampling.
Time-based Sampling
• Time-based sampling (TBS) uses an operating system’s (OS) timer
to periodically interrupt the processor to collect samples. The
sampling interval is user definable. TBS is useful for identifying the
software on your computer that is taking the most CPU time.

Intel ARCHITECTURE IA-32 Specifications

General

Instruction Set	x86
Instruction Set Type	CISC
Memory Segmentation	Supported
Operating Modes	Real mode, Protected mode, Virtual 8086 mode
Max Physical Address Size	36 bits (with PAE)
Max Virtual Address Size	32 bits
Architecture	IA-32 (Intel Architecture 32-bit)
Addressable Memory	4 GB (with Physical Address Extension up to 64 GB)
Floating Point Registers	8 x 80-bit
MMX Registers	8 x 64-bit
SSE Registers	8 x 128-bit
Registers	General-purpose registers (EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX, ESI, EDI, ESP, EBP), Segment registers (CS, DS, SS, ES, FS, GS), Instruction pointer (EIP), Flags register (EFLAGS)
Floating Point Unit	Yes (x87)