Intel® Xeon® Processors and Intel® Processor Trace (Intel® PT) Feature Support
Content Type: Product Information & Documentation | Article ID: 000059254 | Last Reviewed: 05/30/2025
Users are unsure whether their Intel® Xeon® Processor includes support for the Intel® Processor Trace feature.
Intel® Processor Trace (Intel® PT) is a tracing capability added to Intel® Architecture, primarily for software debugging and profiling purposes. It captures detailed information about software execution using dedicated hardware facilities, causing minimal performance impact.
The trace data includes control flow information such as branch targets, timing, branch taken/not taken indications, CR3 changes, and Intel TSX state transitions.
This information is collected in data packets, which can be processed by a software decoder to reconstruct the program flow and analyze software behavior, aiding in debugging crashes, hangs, and performance issues.
Intel® PT is compatible with Intel Xeon® processors, supported across various generations of Intel Xeon® processors, including the Intel Xeon® Processor Scalable Family. Specific details about compatibility and implementations can be found in the Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manuals and the processor specifications.
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For further information, see the chapter on Intel® Processor Trace in the Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manuals.