Product Overview of Superluminal
Superluminal is a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance the development, optimization, and performance analysis of software applications, particularly in the realms of game development, web applications, and system troubleshooting.
Products and Focus Areas
Superluminal offers two primary products:
Superluminal API
The Superluminal API is an AI data interpreter that can be integrated into data dashboards, enabling developers to add conversational dataset interaction capabilities similar to those of ChatGPT and CodeInterpreter. This API is aimed at data-driven applications, allowing for powerful AI-based data interpretation and customizable user experiences.
Superluminal Profiler
The Superluminal Profiler is a performance analysis tool tailored for developers working with C/C , Rust, and .NET on platforms such as Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. This profiler is specifically designed to help developers identify and resolve performance issues in their applications.
Key Features and Functionality
Performance Profiling
- Sampling Profiler: Superluminal operates as a sampling profiler, allowing it to capture performance data without requiring any code modifications. It samples at high frequencies (up to 8 kHz on Windows and 10 kHz on Xbox One), providing detailed insights into application performance.
- Visual UI: Unlike traditional profilers, Superluminal displays profiling data in a visual UI, showing function calls on a per-thread timeline. This allows developers to see exactly what functions are being called, when, and in what order.
Advanced Analysis Tools
- CallGraph and Function List: The profiler includes a CallGraph view for a hierarchical breakdown of functions and a flat list of functions, enabling developers to see what other functions are being called and by whom.
- Source & Disassembly View: This feature displays source code with per-line timing and thread state information. It also includes a mixed-mode disassembly view for per-instruction timing details, even when source code is not available.
Filtering and Navigation
- Time Selection and Filtering: Developers can isolate specific portions of a capture by selecting a time range in the timeline view. All views, including the CallGraph, flat list, and source code view, will filter to that specific section, making it easier to investigate performance spikes or specific application phases.
- Find Functionality: The profiler includes a Find function to locate specific functions within the profiling data, highlighting their occurrences in the timeline and allowing for thread-specific selection.
Multithreading Analysis
- Thread Interactions: Superluminal provides first-class support for analyzing modern, highly parallel applications. It visualizes complex interactions between threads, allowing developers to inspect blocking and unblocking call stacks and navigate between them easily.
Cross-Platform Compatibility
- Supported Platforms: Superluminal supports profiling applications on Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, and works with programming languages such as C , Rust, and .NET.
Installation and Management
- Installation Options: The tool can be installed for the current user or for all users on a machine, with settings stored accordingly. It also supports account-based licensing management through a dashboard.
Use Cases
- Game Development: Improve game performance by identifying bottlenecks and optimizing code execution.
- Web Application Optimization: Enhance the speed and efficiency of web applications by pinpointing areas for improvement.
- Software Debugging: Streamline debugging processes by quickly locating issues and understanding their impact on performance.
- System Troubleshooting: Identify and resolve system-wide performance issues by analyzing the behavior of individual components and their interactions.
In summary, Superluminal is a powerful toolset that combines advanced performance profiling with AI-driven data interpretation, making it an indispensable resource for developers seeking to optimize and enhance the performance of their applications.