Measuring Performance

Darwin offers several tools for measuring the CPU usage. These are especially convenient when attempting to optimize your code and make projections about the necessary time required to complete a long computation. Programs written in Darwin code can sometime run much slower than written in another language such as C. Unfortunately, writing programs in C can be a non-trivial exercise. This trade-off leads to questions about when Darwin code will suffice for the task at hand and when another language must be used. Measuring the performance of your Darwin prototypes is a necessary step towards resolving this issue. Chapter  contains a working example of how to go about this. This section explores some of the primitive functions Darwin offers.