What is execution trace?
The Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor contains a small branch trace buffer that can be used for tracing the instructions actually executed on the processor. The Intel(R) JTAG Debugger can directly access this buffer and reconstruct the instructions, thus providing the user with a snapshot of recent instructions executed. The Intel(R) Application Debugger does the same if a small kernel patch necessary to support his feature is part of the target Linux* OS kernel. The Intel(R) Application Debugger trace readout will additionally filter out all instructions that don’t belong to the debuggee process, thus only providing the execution flow for the very application the developer is interested in. The benefit of having debugger access to the execution trace is that it allows to analyze the exact instruction execution flow leading up to a stack overflow or an exception. Simply set a breakpoint at the exception handler or at the error condition, enable trace logging and once you hit the breakpoint h
