Accessing x86 Performance Counters

[Benjamin Thaut via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Wednesday, 13 May 2015 at 03:38:33 UTC, Maxime 
Chevalier-Boisvert wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone has written D code to access the x86 
> performance counters, to get information such as the number of 
> cache misses and cycle count.

I considered doing that at one point. So I looked for resources 
on the topic and it turns out that you need a kernel mode 
executable to be able to read the performance counters. Luckly 
there is a open source driver for windows which gives you some 
API to access the counters from user mode executables. 
Unfortunately you need to either switch your windows into a 
"unsafe mode" to allow for loading unsigned drivers or you need 
to somehow get a certificate to sign the driver (these are quite 
expensive). At that point I stopped looking into this, because 
both of these options weren't viable for my use case. Once I find 
some time I could dig up the resources I found if you are 
interested.