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Perfetto is an open-source trace viewer built by Google that runs in the browser. CEDARtools.SmartTrace can write a captured trace in its .pftrace format, so a capture can be opened and read without installing anything.

This is interoperability through a file format, not a partner integration: nothing is exchanged between two vendors, and no assurance status passes in either direction. What the export gives you is a fast way to look at a capture.

What the export contains

Function calls become slices on the timeline, and traced memory accesses appear as instant events. The result is the shape of the run: which functions ran, in what order, for how long, and where the gaps are.

Two inputs decide how readable it is

The decoder writes the file when it is asked for the Perfetto format, and it can produce the .csv export in the same run - the two are alternatives only if you want them to be. Two further inputs decide how much the timeline tells you:

• The ELF gives the slices their names. Without it, a slice carries the raw address instead of the function name, and the timeline is readable only to someone holding a map file.
• The core frequency scales the axis to real time. Without it, the axis is in raw trace ticks - still correct in proportion, but not comparable to a requirement stated in microseconds.

Neither is a limitation of the viewer. Both are information the trace itself does not carry, and the export cannot invent them.

What it is not

Perfetto displays what the file contains. It performs no reconstruction of its own, and it forms no opinion about whether an observation was complete. Completeness and correct attribution are decided upstream, in the capture and the reconstruction, and they are reported there - how measurement validity is established. A timeline that looks unbroken is not by itself evidence that the observation was unbroken.

For the same reason this view is a reading aid rather than a record to hand on: where a result has to be carried into a report or another tool, the documented export formats and their accompanying status information are the ones to use.

Availability

The export is currently beta, and availability follows the platform: it is documented for the AURIX^™ SmartTrace workflow, with the current state per target on the supported-targets list. The behavior described on this page follows our SmartTrace user guides; the exact invocation differs per target family and is documented there.

More on CEDARtools.SmartTrace · All integrations

Perfetto is an open-source project. It is named here solely to describe technical interoperability. There is no corporate affiliation and no express endorsement unless separately stated.