Sysprof Picks Up Profiling Support For CPU Power Consumption

GNOME's Sysprof profiler continues on a trajectory of becoming an incredibly versatile component for developers looking to maximize performance and efficiency under this desktop environment. Sysprof already picked up a number of new features for GNOME 3.34 but work is not yet finished.

This cycle has seen GTK4 and other components supporting Sysprof's new engine and other work to narrow down performance bottlenecks within the code.

Lead Sysprof and GNOME Builder developer Christian Hergert has now been working on supporting more GTK4 widgets, various optimizations, and also tracking of CPU energy use. Sysprof has initial support for Intel RAPL -- Running Average Power Limit. Through Intel's RAPL interfaces in the kernel it's possible to measure energy use of the CPU in real-time for spotting areas of the code that may be power hungry.

This CPU power monitoring is increasingly important with GTK4 punting more work over to the GPU, in theory at least it should be lighter work on the CPU but this RAPL / CPU power reporting should be able to confirm that and otherwise spot areas that may be chewing up too much of the CPU.

More details on this latest Sysprof work via Hergert's blog.