NAME

pmc — performance-monitoring counter interface for command execution

SYNOPSIS

pmc

-h

pmc

-C

pmc	-c event command [options ...]

DESCRIPTION

pmc is a means of using a processor's performance-monitoring counter (PMC) facility to measure various aspects of a program's execution. It is meant to be used in a fashion similar to time(1).

The arguments are as follows:

-h

Display a list of performance counter events available on the system.

-C

Cancel any performance counters that are currently running.

-c event

Count the event specified by event while running the command.

DIAGNOSTICS

PMC support is not compiled into the kernel

Performance-monitoring counter support has not been compiled into the kernel. It may be included using the PERFCTRS option. See options(4) for details.

PMC counters are not supported by CPU

Performance-monitoring counters are not available for the CPU.

SEE ALSO

time(1), options(4)

HISTORY

The pmc command first appeared in NetBSD 1.6.

AUTHORS

The pmc command was written by Frank van der Linden <fvdl@wasabisystems.com>. The kernel support for reading performance counters on the i386 architecture was written by Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@zembu.com>.

BUGS

The pmc command currently only supports performance-monitoring counters on the i386 architecture.