CollectedÖloopiterations

CollectedÖloopiterations is a concept in program analysis and profiling describing the collection of per-loop iteration counts observed during execution. It treats each loop construct as a candidate for instrumentation or sampling, recording how many times the loop body executes under varying inputs, runs, or configurations. The term sometimes appears with an emphasized Ö in stylized documentation and is also written as collectedLoopIterations in plain ASCII contexts.

How it is collected: Instrumentation inserts lightweight counters at loop entry and exit, recording counts named by loop identifiers and nesting depth. Alternatively, sampling-based approaches periodically log the current iteration depth. In multi-threaded programs, counts may be aggregated per thread or aggregated with synchronization to produce a total iteration count. Accuracy depends on instrumentation overhead and sampling interval.

Uses: The data supports workload estimation, performance tuning, and cost modeling. It helps identify hot loops, informs decisions about loop unrolling, vectorization, or parallelization, and can improve static analysis that assumes fixed or unknown iteration counts.

Limitations: Overhead from instrumentation, potential measurement skew in highly dynamic loops, and complexities in shared or nested contexts. Interpreting counts requires clear scoping: per-loop, per-nest, or per function invocation.

Example: Consider a double nested loop where the outer loop runs N times and the inner loop runs M times for each outer iteration. CollectedÖloopiterations would typically record outer_loop: N, inner_loop: N*M, and total_iterations: N*M.

See also: loop counters, profiling, workload characterization, dynamic analysis, loop optimization.