Performance evolution blueprint: Understanding the impact of software evolution on performance

Abstract

Understanding the root of a performance drop or improvement requires analyzing different program executions at a fine grain level. Such an analysis involves dedicated profiling and representation techniques. JProfiler and YourKit, two recognized code profilers fail, on both providing adequate metrics and visual representations, conveying a false sense of the performance variation root. We propose performance evolution blueprint, a visual support to precisely compare multiple software executions. Our blueprint is offered by Rizel, a code profiler to efficiently explore performance of a set of benchmarks against multiple software revisions.