PILOT: a prescription for program performance measurement

Application performance measurement and evaluation has developed much more slowly than its sister fields of system performance evaluation and software developments. Progress has been impeded by a shortage of measurement tools designed specifically for programmers, and inadequate detail in the output of existing tools for diagnosing performance problems. The authors propose features that would correct these deficiencies and offer a tool called PILOT to support the claim that a tool embodying those features can be built and would be well received by the software community