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PerfMonitor2 (PM2) is a processor performance and monitoring tool. It allows to track up to 4 processor-related events choosen in a model-specific list. It succeeds to PerfMonitor, and in addition to that first version, PM2 includes monitoring data, like temperatures and powers.

PerfMonitor can be used to identify the performance bottlenecks of a system, or to monitor a program for cache-miss rate or mis-predicted branches. But PerfMonitor can also be used as a hardware-level CPU comparison tool, comparing the key parameters of different CPUs runnning the same benchmark.

Install PM2 (setup version)
Run the setup executable file, and let it guide you for the installation process.

How to use PM2
Using PM2 does not require to be a hardware specialist, on the contrary it was designed to b very easy to use. Nethertheless, some basic processor notions are recommanded to use PM2 at its best.

Terminology
A processor refers to a socket or a package. It includes one or several cores. Each core consists in one or two CPUs (two in the case of the support of Hyper-Threading). A counter represents an event tracked on the processor. Depending on the event, it can be reported at the CPU level (for example CPU usage), the core level (for example core temperature), or at the processor level (for example package power).

Interface

PM2 consists in two views :

The counter selection view includes 4 processor counters and allows to choose the counters to track. When possible, the data reported on these counters are at the processor level.
The CPU counter view shows the counter value at the processor, core or CPU level. It does also include basic information on the processor.

Processors, counters configurations and counters selection

Select a processor
If your system includes more than one processor, you can select the processor to monitor by selecting it in the menu Selection ? Processor. You can then view the list of available counters in the menu Selection ? Counters.

Select a counter
In the counter selection view, left click on a graph to select it. You can change the counter either by right clicking on the selected graph, and choose the counter in the menu, either by selecting it in the menu Selection ? Counters. A check will indicate the current counter selection.

Counters Configurations
The nature and the number of counters depends on the processor model and family. Some counters are using the processor 's performance monitoring features, and because performance monitoring does only allow a few number of events to be monitored in the same time, PM2 allows to switch between several counters configurations. Some counters are present in all configurations, and some others are only available with a specific configuration. The table below shows all the counters available on the supported processors. You can select the counters configuration in menu Selection ? Counters Configurations. The Selection ? Counters menu is dynamically updated to include the counters that are available in the current configuration.

Counters definition

Caches request rate and hit ratio
The cache requests rate is the ratio between the number of requests to that cache and the total number of instructions. The cache hit ratio is the ratio between the number of requests to the cache that resulted in a success (the required data was found in the cache) and the total number of requests to the cache.

Branch Instructions rate and branch hit ratio
Branch instructions rate is the ratio between the number of branch instructions (x86 jz/jnz/jg …) and the total number of instructions. The hit ratio reflects the performance of the branch prediction mechanism.