Prospect, as in "prospecting for gold," is a performance analysis tool developed by the HP UNIX Development Lab to answer the question, "What is that machine doing?" On HP-UX, Prospect uses the Kernel Instrumentation (KI) tracing and Kernel Timing Clocks (KTC) package. Prospect is "interstitial" in nature, which means it collects data from the kernel that is only a "window of time". Therefore, Prospect may miss some history—such as the open() thus missing names of files, or the map() thus missing region names of shared libraries. Prospect accumulates system activity during an interstice (interval) of time. This interval is bounded the same way as the time(1) command; starts a command and waits for its completion. The interstice begins when the command begins and ends when it completes. Unlike the time(1) command, Prospect acquires ALL active processes, not just descendent processes, although it may be limited to outputting data on descendent processes. Prospect is available on HP-UX (PA-RISC 64-bit kernel). If you want to use a performance analysis tool on the Itanium® processor family, see the HP Caliper performance analyzer page.
Note: There is no support provided for the Prospect software from Hewlett-Packard Company at this time. The Prospect software and documentation have not been subjected to extensive testing and quality control. At a future time, Hewlett-Packard Company may or may not offer a supported version of the Prospect software. The software and documentation is provided "AS IS." | 
