# CPU Profiling Chrome

[TOC]

## Introduction

These are instructions for collecting a CPU profile of chromium. All of the profiling methods described here produce output that can be view using the `pprof` tool. `pprof` is highly customizable; here's a screenshot of some example `pprof` output:

![pprof output screenshot](./media/profile-screenshot.png)

This doc is intended to be an authoritative one-stop resource for profiling chromium. At the time of writing, there are a number of existing docs with profiling instructions, in varying states of obsolescence:

* [./linux_profiling.md](./linux_profiling.md)
* [./profiling_content_shell_on_android.md](./profiling_content_shell_on_android.md)
* https://www.chromium.org/developers/profiling-chromium-and-webkit
* https://www.chromium.org/developers/telemetry/profiling

***promo 
CPU profiling is not to be confused with tracing or task profiling:

* https://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/trace-event-profiling-tool
* https://www.chromium.org/developers/threaded-task-tracking
***

## Profiling on Linux

Profiling support is built into tcmalloc and exposed in chromium, so any platform that uses tcmalloc should be able to generate profiling data without using external tools.

### Preparing your checkout

Profiling should always be done on a Release build, which has very similiar performance characteristics to an official build. Make sure the following appears in your `args.gn` file:

    is_debug = false
    enable_profiling = true
    enable_callgrind = true
    
### Preparing your environment

By default, the profiler will take a sample 100 times per second. You can adjust this rate by setting the `CPUPROFILE_FREQUENCY` environment variable before launching chromium:

    $ export CPUPROFILE_FREQUENCY=1000
    
The maximum supported rate is 4000 samples per second.

### Profiling a process over its entire lifetime

To profile the main browser process, add the following argument to your chrome invocation:

    --enable-profiling --profiling-at-start

To profile, e.g., every renderer process, add the following argument to your chrome invocation:

    --enable-profiling --profiling-at-start=renderer --no-sandbox

*** promo
The --no-sandbox argument is required to allow the renderer process to write the profiling output to the file system.
***

When the process being profiled ends, you should see one or more `chrome-profile-{process type}-{process ID}` files in your `$PWD`. Run `pprof` to view the results, e.g.:

    $ pprof -web chrome-profile-renderer-12345
    
*** promo
`pprof` is packed with useful features for visualizing profiling data. Try `pprof --help` for more info.
***

*** promo
Tip for Googlers: running `prodaccess` first will make `pprof` run faster, and eliminate some useless spew to the terminal.
***

### Profiling a process or thread for a defined period of time using perf

First, make sure you have the `linux-perf` package installed:

    $ sudo apt-get install linux-perf
    
After starting up the browser and loading the page you want to profile, press 'Shift-Escape' to bring up the task manager, and get the Process ID of the process you want to profile.

Run the perf tool like this:

    $ perf record -g -p <Process ID> -o <output file>
    
*** promo
`perf` does not honor the `CPUPROFILE_FREQUENCY` env var. To adjust the sampling frequency, use the `-F` argument, e.g., `-F 1000`.
***

To stop profiling, press `Control-c` in the terminal window where `perf` is running. Run `pprof` to view the results, providing the path to the browser executable; e.g.:

    $ pprof -web src/out/Release/chrome <perf output file>

*** promo
`pprof` is packed with useful features for visualizing profiling data. Try `pprof --help` for more info.
***

If you want to limit the profile to a single thread, run:

    $ ps -T -p <Process ID> 
    
From the output, find the Thread ID (column header "SPID") of the thread you want. Now run perf:

    $ perf record -g -t <Thread ID> -o <output file>
    
Use the same `pprof` command as above to view the single-thread results.

### Profiling the renderer process for a period defined in javascript

You can generate a highly-focused profile for any period that can be defined in javascript using the `chrome.gpuBenchmarking` javascript interface. First, adding the following command-line flags when you start chrome:

    $ chrome --enable-gpu-benchmarking --no-sandbox [...]

Open devtools, and in the console, use `chrome.gpuBenchmarking.startProfiling` and `chrome.gpuBenchmarking.stopProfiling` to define a profiling period. e.g.:

    > chrome.gpuBenchmarking.startProfiling('perf.data'); doSomething(); chrome.gpuBenchmarking.stopProfiling()

`chrome.gpuBenchmarking` has a number of useful methods for simulating user-gesture-initiated actions; for example, to profile scrolling:

    > chrome.gpuBenchmarking.startProfiling('perf.data'); chrome.gpuBenchmarking.smoothScrollBy(1000, () => { chrome.gpuBenchmarking.stopProfiling() });

## Profiling on Android

Android (Nougat and later) supports profiling using the [simpleperf](https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/simpleperf) tool.

Follow the [instructions](./android_build_instructions.md) for building and installing chromium on android. With chromium running on the device, run the following command to start profiling on the browser process (assuming your build is in `src/out/Release`):

    $ src/out/Release/bin/chrome_public_apk profile
    Profiler is running; press Enter to stop...
    
Once you stop the profiler, the profiling data will be copied off the device to the host machine and post-processed so it can be viewed in `pprof`, as described above.

To profile the renderer process, you must have just one tab open in chromium, and use a command like this:

    $ src/out/Release/bin/chrome_public_apk profile --profile-process=renderer
    
To limit the profile to a single thread, use a command like this:

    $ src/out/Release/bin/chrome_public_apk profile --profile-process=renderer --profile-thread=main

The `--profile-process` and `--profile-thread` arguments support most of the common process names ('browser', 'gpu', 'renderer') and thread names ('main', 'io', 'compositor', etc.). However, if you need finer control of the process and/or thread to profile, you can specify an explicit Process ID or Thread ID. Check out the usage message for more info:

    $ src/out/Release/bin/chrome_public_apk help profile

## Profiling during a perf benchmark run

The perf benchmark runner can generate a CPU profile over the course of running a perf test. Currently, this is supported only on Linux and Android. To get info about the relevant options, run:

    $ src/tools/perf/run_benchmark help run
    
... and look for the `--interval-profiling-*` options. For example, to generate a profile of the main thread of the renderer process during the "page interactions" phase of a perf benchmark, you might run:

    $ src/tools/perf/run_benchmark run <benchmark name> --interval-profiling-target=renderer:main --interval-profiling-period=interactions --interval-profiling-frequency=2000

The profiling data will be written into the `artifacts/` sub-directory of your perf benchmark output directory (default is `src/tools/perf`), to files with the naming pattern `*.profile.pb`. You can use `pprof` to view the results, as described above.