Performance Counters

Reflex can parse and display performance counters from µScope traces. Counters track metrics like committed instructions, cache misses, branch mispredictions, and stall cycles.

How Counters Are Detected

Counters are automatically detected from the µScope trace schema. A storage is recognized as a counter if it has:

• Exactly 1 slot (dense, not sparse)
• A single U64 field
• Values updated via DA_SLOT_ADD (incremental additions)

Common counters include committed_insns, cycles, retired_insns, mispredicts, dcache_misses, icache_misses.

Counter Panel

Switch to the Counters tab (next to Pipeline Viewer) to see the counter panel. It has two view modes, toggled by clicking the mode button in the header.

Detail Mode

Shows each counter as a row with:

• Mode indicator (T/R/D) — click to cycle between display modes
• Counter name
• Value at cursor — numeric value at the current cursor position
• Sparkline — min-max envelope visualization below each counter

Heatmap Mode

Shows all counters as a compact matrix:

• One row per counter (~6px per row)
• Color intensity = per-cycle delta activity
• Per-counter normalization (each row’s max maps to full brightness)
• Counter names shown when rows are tall enough

The heatmap is designed for scanning 200+ counters at a glance to spot activity patterns and anomalies.

Display Modes

Click the mode indicator (T/R/D) on any counter row to cycle through:

Counter Range

The counter panel displays data for the counter range, which is independent from the pipeline viewport. By default, the counter range covers the full trace. Use the minimap handles to narrow the range to a region of interest.

This independence means you can view full-trace IPC trends in the counter panel while the pipeline view is zoomed into a specific region for detailed inspection.

Konata Traces

Konata format traces do not include performance counters. The counter panel will show “No performance counters in this trace” for Konata files.