A method for identifying bottlenecks within a processing system, the processing system including a plurality of performance monitor counters (PMCs) and at least one monitor mode control register (MMCR) to configure the operations of at least one of the PMCs, includes, for a predetermined sampling...http://www.google.de/patents/US5751945?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US5751945 - Method and system for performance monitoring stalls to identify pipeline bottlenecks and stalls in a processing system 
