Profiling Nios II Systems Application Note 391 - Altera

Using Performance Counter and Timer Components Page 15
Performance Counter Example with the Nios II Command Line
This section describes how to create and run the performance counter software
example with the Nios II command line.
Creating the Performance Counter Software Example
To create the profiler_performance_counter software project in the Nios II software
build flow, follow these steps:
1. Open a Nios II command shell as described in “Creating the Profiler Software
Example” on page 7.
2. Change to the /app/profiler_performance_counter
directory.
3. Create and build the application by typing the following command:
./create-this-app r
The create-this-app script runs the create-this-bsp script, which reads settings
from the parameter_definition.tcl in
/bsp/hal_profiler_performance_counter. This Tcl file
contains the following lines:
set_setting hal.sys_clk_timer peripheral_subsystem_sys_clk_timer
set_setting hal.timestamp_timer peripheral_subsystem_high_res_timer
set_setting hal.enable_gprof true
set_setting hal.enable_exit true
The first two lines set the system clock timer and timestamp timer to the
corresponding timers in the Qsys system.
The third line enables the GNU profiler, and the last line enable the alt_main()
function to call exit() following main().
Running the Performance Counter Software Example
To run the application and collect the GNU profiler data, follow these steps:
1. Open a second Nios II command shell.
2. In the second shell, open a nios2-terminal session by typing the following
command:
nios2-terminal r
3. In your original Nios II command shell, run the program by typing the following
command:
nios2-download -g *.elf r
July 2011 Altera Corporation Profiling Nios II Systems