Using -finstrument-functions

MALT by default use a backtrace appproach to reconstruct the stacks. It has the nice advantage to perform mostly everywhere but has the problem to be very slow. This is the main source of the overhead of MALT when the app is making millions of memory allocation.

Faster instrumentation

In this case, in order to reduce the overhead you can recompile your application (ideally also the libraries otherwise they will be not seen) by using :

gcc -finstrument-functions -g ...

It will had some hooks at the entry/exit of each function so the stack is reconstruct while diffing into the call graph and not for every malloc. When making lots of mallocs it lower the overhead.

Then use malt by using :

malt -s enter-exit ./my_program

Get the stack memory usage

This option is also required to reconstruct the memory used by the stack.

Bug: There is currently a limitation here. Due to the way GCC implement it, the leaf function will not be measured in currentl implementation of MALT.