Breaking the Cycle - A Short Overview of Memory-Access Sampling Differences on Modern x86 CPUs
Title
Breaking the Cycle - A Short Overview of Memory-Access Sampling Differences on Modern x86 CPUs
Authors
Roland Kühn, Jan Mühlig, and Jens Teubner
Accepted at
21st International Workshop on Data Management on New Hardware (DaMoN), Berlin, Germany, June 2025
Abstract
As hardware complexity increases, profiling becomes essential for understanding system behavior. This paper compares different x86 sampling implementations for memory access profiling, revealing their complementary capabilities and limitations. Plus, we demonstrate that current abstractions like the perf subsystem inadequately expose platform-specific features.