How to measure the ARM load or consumed MIPS ?

[viterbi]

ARM Load measurement.

Hi friends,
I am working on a complex SOC which includes 2 DSP cores and one ARM9 core.
There is a requirement to calculate the ARM load or MIPS getting consumed when I run a particualr application. The OS what we are using is Nucleus. If some body had already done some thing similar to this, I would like to get some ideas on the same. Even if there is no direct solution I would like to discuss with those who are interested..
Thanks,

 

[bobsanjose]

ARM Load measurement.

Hi,
a couple simple options to measure the load:
1. If you have a scope / logic analyzer and a pin that is not needed for the function of your program, you can toggle it during the "idle task" while not executing useful code, just waiting for something to happen. It is rather easy to find the times when the pin toggles ergo the CPU is idle.
Another option is the have a software counter in the idle task. One time you let the software counter count without any other tasks running, it is the only task and you do it for a given amount of time, let's say 1 minute.
Next time you let the system run and try to maximize the load during that minute. The ratio between the fully loaded and the unloaded SW-timer gives an indication of headroom you have left.
Both methods do not take into account real-time requirements such as the processor needs to react to a given event within a short time. If several of these real-time events happen overlapping this could become your bottleneck rather than the average CPU-load.

Hope this helps a little, Bob