How Do Applications Run on a New Micro-Architecture? Intel VTune Amplifier XE 2011 AQuestionnswers the

How Do Applications Run on a New Micro-Architecture? Intel VTune Amplifier XE 2011 AQuestionnswers the 

The Profile System target type provided by Intel VTune Amplifier XE 2011 allows you to analyze the system performance as a whole and provides you with all the information you might need in order to optimize the applications for your new target micro-architecture.

It happens all the time. You have an existing set of applications running on certain Windows versions and you know that they take full advantage of certain existing target micro-architectures. However, you receive a requirement to check whether the applications are capable of providing the desired UX in a different micro-architecture. The Profile System target type provided by Intel VTune Amplifier XE 2011 allows you to analyze the system performance as a whole and provides you with all the information you might need in order to optimize the applications for your new target micro-architecture.
The Profile System target type usually provides valuable information that allows you to answer the following questions:

• Can we use the new HTML 5 web applications in our Intel Atom-based tablets?
  
• Can we run our existing Silverlight applications in our Intel Core i5 Ultrabooks?
  
• Do our desktop applications run as expected in our Intel Core i3 Ultrabooks?
  
• Which optimizations should we perform in our existing desktop applications to provide a better UX in our Intel Core i5 Ultrabooks?
  
• How can we improve overall system performance in order to run all our necessary applications in the Ultrabooks?
  
• Are our applications taking advantage of modern Sandy Bridge micro-architecture enhancements?
  

When you analyze the system performance as a whole, consider all the applications/processes that have to run to support the execution of your applications and how they execute in a specific micro-architecture. You can also analyze what happens when you launch all the necessary applications and focus your optimizations on reducing the load time. It is usually a good idea to analyze the system performance as a whole before you assume that many applications are ready to provide the desired UX in a new micro-architecture. The Profile System target type is one of the options displayed in the dropdown list when you start a new Intel VTune Amplifier XE 2011 project (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Profile System target type option selected in a new Intel VTune Amplifier XE 2011 project.