Patent ID: 8413120

Claim:
A method for monitoring performance of a computer system, the method comprising: inserting one or more probes in one or more hardware-based processing units, wherein said probes are configured to generate probe signals in response to detecting predetermined processing events; configuring a hardware-based device to: receive said probe signals from the probes; store probe event messages for the received probe signals in an event memory in the hardware-based device; transfer the probe event messages from the event memory to a memory external to the hardware-based device via a first-in-first-out buffer; regulate a frequency of the transfer of the probe event messages from the event memory based on a feedback; and configuring a memory controller device to: transfer probe event messages from the first-in-first-out buffer to the memory; and provide the feedback to the hardware-based device, wherein the feedback includes a current measure of accesses to the memory.