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Doing an Initial Performance Evaluation

So, you have some code and you want to see if it is suffering from performance problems. Where do you start? Not all problems are immediately visible. You might notice that an operation took several seconds to perform, but you might not notice an operation that consumed too many CPU cycles or allocated too much memory. This is where Apple’s performance tools come into play. They can help you see aspects of your program that are easily overlooked.

The following sections provide a brief overview of how to use some key tools when starting to analyze your program. These tools are good for identifying potential problems and can provide a significant amount of performance data. Remember, though, that there may be other tools that provide more specific information related to the problem. Many of the Apple performance tools are designed for specific tasks, such as tracking memory allocations or finding leaks. Running your application with several other tools can help you confirm whether a particular area is a problem.

Contents:

Using top
Using Quartz Debug
Using Spin Control
Using Shark

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