Sampling Rate

By default, a time-based event set is selected. It creates a sample every 100,000 clock cycles per processor. If the timer interrupt is used, the timer is set to whatever the jiffy rate is and is not user-settable. If the cpu_type is not timer, each event can have a sampling rate set for it. The sampling rate is the number of events between each sample snapshot.

When setting the event for the counter, a sample rate can also be specified:

opcontrol --event=<event-name>:<sample-rate>

Replace <sample-rate> with the number of events to wait before sampling again. The smaller the count, the more frequent the samples. For events that do not happen frequently, a lower count may be needed to capture the event instances.

Be extremely careful when setting sampling rates. Sampling too frequently can overload the system, causing the system to appear as if it is frozen or causing the system to actually freeze.