Embedded Design Handbook

ID 683689
Date 8/28/2023
Public
Document Table of Contents

4.4.4.1. Performance Counter Advantages

Performance counters are the only mechanism available with the Nios® II development kits that provide measurements with little intrusion. You can use efficient macros to start and stop the measurement for each measured section. A performance counter is an order of magnitude faster than the GNU profiler. The only less intrusive way to collect measurement data would be a completely hardware-based solution, such as a logic analyzer configured with triggers on particular bus addresses.