You can also check statistics like number of page faults, data/instruction cache misses with a profiler. Usually (at least for me), looking at the execution tra

You can also check statistics like number of page faults, data/instruction cache misses with a profiler. Usually (at least for me), looking at the execution trace, CPU statistics, understanding the code and input are enough for optimization. I think profilers can only help you to focus on certain hot spots of your program, and provide hints to things that are most expensive. You still have to make some educated guess. I think dumping the raw memory is usually used for debugging (postmortem?) rather than to optimize for performance.