Performance monitor and method for performance monitoring within a data processing system

摘要

The present invention provides a performance monitor including a threshold indicator, a granularity indicator, an event detector, and an event counter. The threshold indicator indicates a number of threshold increments, which each correspond to a number of occurrences of a first event. The granularity indicator indicates the number of occurrences of the first event corresponding to each of the threshold increments indicated by the threshold indicator. The granularity indicator has at least a first state and a second state such that the granularity indicator indicates that a first number of occurrences of the first event correspond to a threshold increment in the first state and that a different second number of occurrences of the first event correspond to a threshold increment in the second state. In response to a number of occurrences of the first event detected by the event detector during a selected interval exceeding the number of occurrences indicated by the threshold value and the granularity indicator, the event counter is incremented. In one embodiment, each occurrence of the first event corresponds to a processor clock cycle and the selected interval is defined as the duration of a memory access.