Intel Vtune Amd Uprof

mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/skills/profilers/intel-vtune-amd-uprof

by mohitmishra786bdc58472fa9fNo license253 starsListed Oct 9, 2026Updated Oct 9, 2026Repository updated 3 months ago

Intel VTune and AMD uProf profiling skill for microarchitecture analysis. Use when analyzing hotspots, microarchitecture bottlenecks, memory access patterns, pipeline stalls, or using the roofline model. Covers VTune Community Edition (free) and AMD uProf as a free alternative. Activates on queries about VTune, uProf, microarchitecture analysis, pipeline stalls, memory bandwidth, roofline model, or hardware performance analysis.

Instructions onlySoftware Development

AI-generated overview

Guides CPU microarchitecture profiling with Intel VTune and AMD uProf, covering hotspots, stalls, memory access and roofline analysis.

What it does: This skill provides instructions for profiling CPU code with Intel VTune Profiler (free Community Edition) and AMD uProf. It covers setup and CLI commands, analysis types such as hotspots, microarchitecture exploration, memory access and threading, and how to read metrics like IPC, pipeline stalls and DRAM bandwidth. It also explains the roofline model and how to compare achieved performance against hardware limits.
When to use it: Use it when investigating CPU hotspots, microarchitecture bottlenecks, pipeline stalls, cache or memory bandwidth issues, or when applying the roofline model. It is also relevant when choosing AMD uProf as a free alternative to VTune on AMD CPUs.
Requirements: Requires Intel VTune Profiler (Community Edition) or AMD uProf installed, plus optional tools such as likwid-perfctr for manual roofline measurements. Programs should be built with debug symbols for meaningful results. It ships no scripts; it is instructions only.

Intel VTune & AMD uProf

Purpose

Guide agents through CPU microarchitecture profiling with Intel VTune Profiler (free Community Edition) and AMD uProf: hotspot identification, microarchitecture analysis, memory access pattern optimization, pipeline stall diagnosis, and roofline model analysis.

Triggers

"How do I use Intel VTune to profile my code?"
"What are pipeline stalls and how do I reduce them?"
"How do I analyze memory bandwidth with VTune?"
"What is the roofline model and how do I use it?"
"How do I use AMD uProf as a free alternative to VTune?"
"My code has good cache hit rates but is still slow"

Workflow

1. VTune setup (free Community Edition)

bash

# Download Intel VTune Profiler (Community Edition — free)# https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/oneapi/vtune-profiler.html
# Install on Linuxsource /opt/intel/oneapi/vtune/latest/env/vars.sh
# CLI usagevtune -collect hotspots ./progvtune -collect microarchitecture-exploration ./progvtune -collect memory-access ./prog
# View results in GUIvtune-gui &# File → Open Result → select .vtune directory
# Or use amplxe-cl (legacy CLI)amplxe-cl -collect hotspots ./progamplxe-cl -report hotspots -r result/

# Download Intel VTune Profiler (Community Edition — free)# https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/oneapi/vtune-profiler.html
# Install on Linuxsource /opt/intel/oneapi/vtune/latest/env/vars.sh
# CLI usagevtune -collect hotspots ./progvtune -collect microarchitecture-exploration ./progvtune -collect memory-access ./prog
# View results in GUIvtune-gui &# File → Open Result → select .vtune directory
# Or use amplxe-cl (legacy CLI)amplxe-cl -collect hotspots ./progamplxe-cl -report hotspots -r result/

2. Analysis types

Analysis	What it finds	When to use
Hotspots	CPU-bound functions	First step — find where time is spent
Microarchitecture Exploration	IPC, pipeline stalls, retired instructions	After hotspot — why is the hotspot slow?
Memory Access	Cache misses, DRAM bandwidth, NUMA	Memory-bound code
Threading	Lock contention, parallel efficiency	Multithreaded code
HPC Performance	Vectorization, memory, roofline	HPC / scientific code
I/O	Disk and network bottlenecks	I/O-bound code

3. Hotspot analysis

bash

# Collect and report hotspotsvtune -collect hotspots -result-dir hotspots_result ./prog
# Report top functions by CPU timevtune -report hotspots -r hotspots_result -format csv | head -20
# CLI output example:# Function       CPU Time  Module# compute_fft    4.532s    libfft.so# matrix_mult    2.108s    prog# parse_input    0.234s    prog

# Collect and report hotspotsvtune -collect hotspots -result-dir hotspots_result ./prog
# Report top functions by CPU timevtune -report hotspots -r hotspots_result -format csv | head -20
# CLI output example:# Function       CPU Time  Module# compute_fft    4.532s    libfft.so# matrix_mult    2.108s    prog# parse_input    0.234s    prog

Build with debug info for meaningful symbols:

bash

gcc -O2 -g ./prog.c -o prog     # symbols visible in VTunegcc -O2 -g -gsplit-dwarf -fno-omit-frame-pointer ./prog.c -o prog  # better stacks

gcc -O2 -g ./prog.c -o prog     # symbols visible in VTunegcc -O2 -g -gsplit-dwarf -fno-omit-frame-pointer ./prog.c -o prog  # better stacks

4. Microarchitecture exploration — pipeline stalls

bash

vtune -collect microarchitecture-exploration -r micro_result ./progvtune -report summary -r micro_result

vtune -collect microarchitecture-exploration -r micro_result ./progvtune -report summary -r micro_result

Key metrics to examine:

Metric	Meaning	Good value
IPC (Instructions Per Clock)	How many instructions retire per cycle	x86: aim for > 2.0
CPI (Clocks Per Instruction)	Inverse of IPC	Lower is better
Bad Speculation	Branch mispredictions	< 5%
Front-End Bound	Instruction decode bottleneck	< 15%
Back-End Bound	Execution unit or memory stall	< 30%
Retiring	Useful work fraction	> 70% ideal
Memory Bound	% cycles waiting for memory	< 20%

Pipeline Analysis (Top-Down Methodology):├── Retiring (good, useful work)├── Bad Speculation (branch mispredictions)├── Front-End Bound│   ├── Fetch Latency (I-cache misses, branch mispredicts)│   └── Fetch Bandwidth└── Back-End Bound    ├── Memory Bound    │   ├── L1 Bound → L1 cache misses    │   ├── L2 Bound → L2 cache misses    │   ├── L3 Bound → L3 cache misses    │   └── DRAM Bound → main memory bandwidth limited    └── Core Bound → ALU/compute bound

Pipeline Analysis (Top-Down Methodology):├── Retiring (good, useful work)├── Bad Speculation (branch mispredictions)├── Front-End Bound│   ├── Fetch Latency (I-cache misses, branch mispredicts)│   └── Fetch Bandwidth└── Back-End Bound    ├── Memory Bound    │   ├── L1 Bound → L1 cache misses    │   ├── L2 Bound → L2 cache misses    │   ├── L3 Bound → L3 cache misses    │   └── DRAM Bound → main memory bandwidth limited    └── Core Bound → ALU/compute bound

5. Memory access analysis

bash

# Collect memory access profilevtune -collect memory-access -r mem_result ./prog
# Key output sections:# - Memory Bound: % time waiting for memory# - LLC (Last Level Cache) Miss Rate# - DRAM Bandwidth: GB/s achieved vs theoretical peak# - NUMA: cross-socket accesses (for multi-socket systems)

# Collect memory access profilevtune -collect memory-access -r mem_result ./prog
# Key output sections:# - Memory Bound: % time waiting for memory# - LLC (Last Level Cache) Miss Rate# - DRAM Bandwidth: GB/s achieved vs theoretical peak# - NUMA: cross-socket accesses (for multi-socket systems)

Reading DRAM bandwidth:

If DRAM-bound: optimize data layout (AoS → SoA), reduce working set, improve spatial locality.

6. AMD uProf — free alternative for AMD CPUs

bash

# Download AMD uProf# https://www.amd.com/en/developer/uprof.html
# CLI profilingAMDuProfCLI collect --config tbp ./prog          # time-based profilingAMDuProfCLI collect --config assess ./prog       # microarchitecture assessmentAMDuProfCLI collect --config memory ./prog       # memory access
# Generate reportAMDuProfCLI report -i /tmp/uprof_result/ -o report.html
# Open GUIAMDuProf &

# Download AMD uProf# https://www.amd.com/en/developer/uprof.html
# CLI profilingAMDuProfCLI collect --config tbp ./prog          # time-based profilingAMDuProfCLI collect --config assess ./prog       # microarchitecture assessmentAMDuProfCLI collect --config memory ./prog       # memory access
# Generate reportAMDuProfCLI report -i /tmp/uprof_result/ -o report.html
# Open GUIAMDuProf &

AMD uProf metrics map to VTune equivalents:

Retired Instructions → IPC analysis
Branch Mispredictions → Bad Speculation
L1/L2/L3 Cache Misses → Memory Bound levels
Data Cache Accesses → Cache efficiency

7. Roofline model

The roofline model shows whether code is compute-bound or memory-bound by comparing achieved performance against hardware limits:

Performance (GFLOPS/s)     |                    _______________Peak |                 /Perf |              /  compute bound     |           /     |        /     |     /  memory bandwidth bound     |  /     +------------------------------→        Arithmetic Intensity (FLOPS/Byte)

Performance (GFLOPS/s)     |                    _______________Peak |                 /Perf |              /  compute bound     |           /     |        /     |     /  memory bandwidth bound     |  /     +------------------------------→        Arithmetic Intensity (FLOPS/Byte)

bash

# VTune roofline collectionvtune -collect hpc-performance -r roofline_result ./prog# Then: VTune GUI → Roofline view
# For manual calculation:# Arithmetic Intensity = FLOPS / memory_bytes_accessed# Peak FLOPS = CPUs × cores × freq × FLOPS_per_cycle_per_core# Peak BW = from hardware spec (e.g., 51.2 GB/s for DDR4-3200 dual channel)
# likwid-perfctr for manual roofline data (Linux)likwid-perfctr -C 0 -g FLOPS_DP ./prog          # double-precision FLOPSlikwid-perfctr -C 0 -g MEM ./prog               # memory bandwidth

# VTune roofline collectionvtune -collect hpc-performance -r roofline_result ./prog# Then: VTune GUI → Roofline view
# For manual calculation:# Arithmetic Intensity = FLOPS / memory_bytes_accessed# Peak FLOPS = CPUs × cores × freq × FLOPS_per_cycle_per_core# Peak BW = from hardware spec (e.g., 51.2 GB/s for DDR4-3200 dual channel)
# likwid-perfctr for manual roofline data (Linux)likwid-perfctr -C 0 -g FLOPS_DP ./prog          # double-precision FLOPSlikwid-perfctr -C 0 -g MEM ./prog               # memory bandwidth

Related skills

Use skills/profilers/hardware-counters for raw PMU event collection with perf stat
Use skills/profilers/linux-perf for perf-based profiling on Linux
Use skills/low-level-programming/cpu-cache-opt for memory access pattern optimization
Use skills/low-level-programming/simd-intrinsics for vectorization to increase FLOPS

Source and attribution

Source:mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skillsinskills/profilers/intel-vtune-amd-uprofat commitbdc5847

License: No license

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Intel Vtune Amd Uprof

Intel VTune & AMD uProf

Purpose

Triggers

Workflow

1. VTune setup (free Community Edition)

2. Analysis types

3. Hotspot analysis

4. Microarchitecture exploration — pipeline stalls

5. Memory access analysis

6. AMD uProf — free alternative for AMD CPUs

7. Roofline model

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