likwid

likwid (like I knew what I am doing) is a cool project that offers easy-to-use command-line tools for Linux. It's designed to help programmers create high-performance, multi-threaded programs without all the hassle.

What Tools Does likwid Offer?

Here’s a quick look at some of the handy tools included in likwid:

• likwid-topology: This shows you the thread and cache topology.


• likwid-perfCtr: It measures hardware performance counters on both Intel and AMD processors.


• likwid-features: This tool lets you show and toggle hardware prefetch control bits on Intel Core 2 processors.


• likwid-pin: You can pin your threaded application without touching your code! It supports pthreads, Intel OpenMP, and gcc OpenMP.

Why Choose likwid?

You might wonder why you should pick likwid over other performance counter tools out there. Well, here’s why it stands out:

• No kernel patching is needed; it works with any vanilla kernel that has the standard msr module.


• The interface is transparent—it's always clear which events are chosen, and event tags match the documentation naming.


• This tool is lightweight; it doesn't use sampling and adds no extra overhead during measurement.


• Super easy to use! No Java hogs here. You can build it simply without changing your code, plus it's configurable from outside with a clear CLI interface.


• Likwid supports both Intel and AMD processors, making it really versatile!


• The team keeps things up to date by fully supporting new processors as quickly as possible.

If You Need Help

If you run into any issues while using likwid, don’t hesitate to ask questions in the User Mailing List. They’re super helpful!

A Little Note

Please remember that while Likwid is already usable, it's not officially released yet. Your feedback is crucial to finding bugs and improving this software before its big launch. Try it out! If you spot any problems or have feature requests, just shoot me an email or drop a message in the Forum. I promise I'll get back to you quickly!

You can download Likwid here.