PAPI, the Performance API project, specifies a standard application-programming interface (API) for accessing hardware performance counters available on most modern microprocessors. These counters exist as a small set of registers that count Events, occurrences of specific signals related to the processor’s function. Monitoring these events facilitates correlation between the structure of source/object code and the efficiency of the mapping of that code to the underlying architecture.
PAPI-V adds detection of operation inside a virtual environment and several virtual machine related components, including one to report steal time from Linux. Interested in learning more about PAPI? See here for an interview with one of the developers!
This tool is created outside of VMware, and while VMware believes that the tool is of interest to our ecosystem, we cannot make guarantees, warranties, or support of any kind for this tool. If you choose to use this tool, do so at your own risk.
See Also: Performance API (PAPI) Project Interview