The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 26, 2002
Filed:
Feb. 04, 1999
Paul Hinker, Longmont, CO (US);
Shaun Dennie, Westminster, CO (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture consistent with the present invention assist a programmer in the optimization of an application program by displaying information about memory use in a manner useful to the programmer. A programmer selects an application program that he wishes to optimize. The application program is submitted to an instrumentation process that inserts additional instructions into the code of the application program so that, when executed, the instrumented code produces an output file, called a trace output file. The trace output file contains information about memory accesses. The trace output file is then submitted to a second program, or visualizer, that visually displays the memory accesses using a different visual effect for each type of memory access operation. The visualizer may be run at different speeds, forwards or backwards, paused, or may step through the memory accesses frame-by-frame. This visual representation of memory accesses allows programmers to recognize patterns of memory use that can be used to optimize the application program.