TuningFork: A platform for visualization and analysis of complex real-time systems

Abstract

Debugging the timing behavior of real-time systems is notoriously difficult, and with a new generation of complex systems consisting of tens of millions of lines of code, the difficulty is increasing enormously. We have developed TuningFork, a tool especially designed for visualization and analysis of large-scale real-time systems. TuningFork is capable of recording high-frequency events at sub-microsecond resolution with minimal perturbation. Users can visualize system activity online in real-time and interactively explore the data. Data can be gathered from multiple layers and/or components and synthesized into visualizations that illuminate whole system interactions. Interactive exploration of hypothesis is naturally supported by direct manipulation to quickly build up complex visualizations.