International Business Machines Corporation

David Addy Bishop

Charles Lincoln Raby

Kenneth M Herrington

Timothy M Holck

James D Henson, Jr

Michael Hadley Skelton

Robert Charles Shay

Mark David Turner

Telford Knox, Jr

Raymond S Baumgartner

Stephen Asa Yeamans

John R Dyar

A system resource monitor is provided to capture a data processing system's internal resource utilization, such as memory, CPU, or peripheral device availability/utilization. The captured `state` of the data processing system's resources is maintained in real-time, while the impact on the system's performance in providing such information is kept to a minimum. This is accomplished through a combination of various techniques, including specialized device drivers for the respective devices coupled with a unique data reduction technique. Such techniques include filtering only events which are of interest and combining similarly related events to reduce data processing requirements. This real-time support provides an immediate and accurate representation of the internal operations of the data processing system. Further, these resources can monitored at the process level of a multiprocessing system. This captured data can be used by an application or control program to identify, isolate, and fine-tune the data processing system's resources to improve the overall efficiency of the system being monitored.

Real time internal resource monitor for data processing system

A method and apparatus are disclosed for monitoring software applications within a first processor during development thereof. A limited number of uniquely identifiable elements or 'hooks' are inserted into the software application under development and each time an element is encountered during processing of that software application, the identity of the element and a selected data frame are coupled to the output bus of the first processor. A data output card is utilized to couple that information to a data collection card via a dedicated cable. The data collection card is then utilized to transfer the identity of each element encountered and its associated data frame along with a time value, to a second processor, which is utilized to record that data. In one embodiment of the present invention, a switched bank memory system is utilized in the second processor to permit high speed data storage. In the event the software application under development generates monitoring outputs at a speed greater than may be accurately stored within the second processor, an overrun indication is stored within the second processor and subsequent tests may be run utilizing fewer 'hooks' within the software application under development.

First processor inserting hooks into software and sending unique

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

David Addy Bishop