Running the Intel VTune Profiler on Fedora
TL;DR: This article explains how to install and configure the Intel VTune Profiler on Fedora to use advanced analysis such as the Memory Access tool
The VTune™ Profiler is a well-known commercial performance analysis tool by Intel that targets both Intel and AMD processors on GNU/Linux and Windows. It is popular within the High Performance Computing (HPC) industry and its available for free. You can think about it as an x86-specific complement to Apple Instruments for macOS, which we extensively covered in a previous post.
I recently started to dig into the VTune Profiler for its Memory Access analysis tool to better explore CPU cache issues on a Linux-based benchmark of JSON Toolkit, my high-performance JSON Schema compiler and validator. However, turns out getting the VTune Profiler (and more specifically the Memory Access tool) to work flawlessly on my Fedora system was not a walk in the park. This article aims to document the process in detail for my future-self and others. Note that other GNU/Linux distributions might likely require different installation and configuration procedures. I’m only covering Fedora as my GNU/Linux distribution of choice.
This article is based on Fedora 40 Workstation x86_64, running on a Dell XPS 13”, with Intel VTune Profiler 2024.3.0 (build 628755).
