October 24, 2000 PMC 1

### NAME

pmc - performance-monitoring counter interface for command execution

### SYNOPSIS

pmc -h pmc -C pmc -c event command [options ...]

### DESCRIPTION

pmc is a means of using a processor's performance-monitoring counter (PMC) facility to measure various aspects of a program's execution. It is meant to be used in a fashion similar to time(1).

The arguments are as follows:

-h
  Display a list of performance counter events available on the system.

-C
  Cancel any performance counters that are currently running.

-c event
  Count the event specified by event while running the command.

### DIAGNOSTICS

PMC support is not compiled into the kernel
  Performance-monitoring counter support has not been compiled into the kernel. It may be included using the PERFCTRS option. See options(4) for details.

PMC counters are not supported by CPU
  Performance-monitoring counters are not available for the CPU.

### SEE ALSO

time(1), options(4)

### HISTORY

The pmc command first appeared in NetBSD1.6.

### AUTHORS

The pmc command was written by Frank van der Linden <fvdl@wasabisystems.com>
. The kernel support for reading performance counters on the i386 architecture was written by Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@zembu.com>
.

### BUGS

The pmc command currently only supports performance-monitoring counters on the i386 architecture.