Using the ETW to collect the PMC counters is easy when you know how. It took me some time to get it working so I am gonna describe it in case somebody wants to do it without BenchmarkDotNet. The types used below come from the Microsoft.Diagnostics.Tracing.TraceEvent NuGet package.

First of all, you need to find out which Counters are available for your machine.

var infos = TraceEventProfileSources.GetInfo()

Or from command prompt:

tracelog.exe -profilesources Help

You need to be aware of the fact that this feature is available only for Windows 8+. I couldn’t resist sharing how the OS version check is implemented:

int num = Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major * 10 + Environment.OSVersion.Version.Minor;
if (num < 62)
	throw new ApplicationException("Profile source only availabe on Win8 and beyond.");

Counters are represented by following type:

public class ProfileSourceInfo
{
    /// Human readable name of the CPU performance counter (eg BranchInstructions, TotalIssues ...)
    public string Name;

    /// The ID that can be passed to SetProfileSources
    public int ID;

    /// This many events are skipped for each sample that is actually recorded
    public int Interval;

    /// The smallest Interval can be (typically 4K)
    public int MinInterval;

    /// The largest Interval can be (typically maxInt).
    public int MaxInterval;
}

Once you choose the counters you want to collect you need to set them up. The problem is that it’s not clear how many counters you can use at the same time. For my machine, it’s three. If I set up more, I get a silent error. The events are not being raised for the ones set up after first three. ;)

TraceEventProfileSources.Set(
    selectedCounters.Select(counter => counter.ID).ToArray(),
    selectedCounters.Select(counter => counter.MinInterval).ToArray());

Now you need to create a Kernel ETW Session:

var session = new TraceEventSession(KernelTraceEventParser.KernelSessionName);

The next thing is to enable the right Kernel Provider. You must be elevated (Admin) to use ETW Kernel Session. Only single kernel session can exist at the same time. If some session existed before, it will be restarted.

session.EnableKernelProvider(KernelTraceEventParser.Keywords.PMCProfile | KernelTraceEventParser.Keywords.Profile)

before you start processing events you should sign up for following two events:

session.Source.Kernel.PerfInfoCollectionStart += _ => { }; // we must subscribe to this event, otherwise the PerfInfoPMCSample is not raised ;)
session.Source.Kernel.PerfInfoPMCSample += OnPerfInfoPmcSample;

PerfInfoCollectionStart contains info about the interval (I am ignoring it because I set up it first so I know the value).

PerfInfoPMCSample is raised when a new sample is collected. It contains the id of the process and id of the counter, which should allow you to do the math (counters[processId][counterId].SamplesCollected += Interval). It also contains InstructionPointer which could be used to connect the sample with source code line. If I ever found few weeks of free time I would implement such feature for BenchmarkDotNet.

Sources

• xunit-performance
• PerfView
• Microsoft.Diagnostics.Tracing.TraceEvent + ILSpy