clock timing measurement

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

 my aim is to see how many clock cycles it takes for my C code to execute.  How can I do this?.  I have no block design file, I'm using an verliog code as top level design, and a C code to download into processor and make the fucntion(verilog+c code) to work.  It works perfectly, which I want.  My question, is..  How can I know How many clock cycles it takes for my C code to execute the function(logic) which I want?.  waiting for your reply guys.  thanks, Ana

[Altera_Forum]

If you're using NIOS 2 there is a profiler component (performance counter unit) you can add to your system. I've never used it myself so I don't know how it works. 

 I guess you could make one of those yourself, a write to a sopc component would start a counter and then with another write stop it and read out the value. A start and stop of the timer would give you an estimate of the avalon overhead.  You could also use a timer in your NIOS 2 core to see how long time the program takes to execute and then estimate the number of cycles.  I hope this helps

[Altera_Forum]

thanks, i will try it out.

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

 should I give the base address of PERFORMANCE_COUNTER_0_BASE, or wil it get it automatically from system.h,   If I dont declare it gives me an error saying " first use of this function" PERFORMANCE_COUNTER_0_BASE  If I declare this with its base address like.  # define PERFORMANCE_COUNTER_0_BASE 0x00021000  it builds and runs but I get an output where the output runs like :   yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy   why is this because of ?.  waiting for your reply.  thanks, Anand

[Altera_Forum]

I don't know, as I said I never needed to use it. There should be some documentation for the component somewhere on Alteras homepage. If you don't need exact statistics you can try the other methods I suggested. 

 //Ola