Low-level native plug-in Profiler API

The Unity Profiler is a tool that you can use to analyze and improve the performance of your application. The ProfilerA window that helps you to optimize your game. It shows how much time is spent in the various areas of your game. For example, it can report the percentage of time spent rendering, animating, or in your game logic. More info
See in Glossary carries out frame time analysis of function calls in native Unity code and managed code in your application. You can use the ProfilerMarker API to insert timing markers into your own code to get a better understanding of the performance of specific areas of your application.

You can use the low-level native plug-inA platform-specific native code library that is created outside of Unity for use in Unity. Allows you can access features like OS calls and third-party code libraries that would otherwise not be available to Unity. More info
See in Glossary profiler API to extend the Profiler and profile the performance of native plug-inA set of code created outside of Unity that creates functionality in Unity. There are two kinds of plug-ins you can use in Unity: Managed plug-ins (managed .NET assemblies created with tools like Visual Studio) and Native plug-ins (platform-specific native code libraries). More info
See in Glossary code, or to prepare profiling data to send to third-party profiling tools such as RazorA CPU/GPU chip set used in PlayStation® hardware. More info
See in Glossary (PS4), PIX (Xbox, Windows), Chrome Tracing, ETW, ITT, Vtune, or Telemetry. The low-level native plug-in Profiler APIs provide the following interfaces for communication between the Unity Profiler and external tooling:

• IUnityProfiler: Use this interface to add instrumentation events to the Unity Profiler from C/C++ native plug-in code.
• IUnityProfilerCallbacks: Use this interface to intercept Unity Profiler events and store or redirect them to other tools.

IUnityProfiler API

Use the IUnityProfiler plug-in API to add instrumentation to the C/C++ code of your native plug-ins.

The plug-in API is represented by IUnityProfiler interface, which is declared in the IUnityProfiler.h header. Unity stores the header in the <UnityInstallPath>\Editor\Data\PluginAPI folder of your Unity installation. (On macOS, right-click on the Unity application, and select Show Package Contents. The header is in Contents\PluginAPI).

Method	Description
CreateMarker	Creates a Profiler markerPlaced in code to describe a CPU or GPU event that is then displayed in the Unity Profiler window. Added to Unity code by default, or you can use ProfilerMarker API to add your own custom markers. More info See in Glossary which represents a named instrumentation scope, which you can then use to generate instrumentation samples.
SetMarkerMetadataName	Specifies custom parameter names which can be passed along with an instrumentation sample for a Profiler marker.
BeginSample	Begins an instrumentation section of a code named after the Profiler marker.
EndSample	Ends an instrumentation section.
EmitEvent	Emits generic events with metadata.
IsEnabled	Returns 1 if the Profiler is capturing the data.
IsAvailable	Returns 1 for Editor or Development Players where the Profiler is available, and 0 for Release Players.
RegisterThread	Registers the current thread under the specified name.
UnregisterThread	Unregisters the current thread from Profiler.

Usage example

This example generates Profiler events that are then shown in the Profiler Window.

#include <IUnityInterface.h>
#include <IUnityProfiler.h>

static IUnityProfiler* s_UnityProfiler = NULL;
static const UnityProfilerMarkerDesc* s_MyPluginMarker = NULL;
static bool s_IsDevelopmentBuild = false;

static void MyPluginWorkMethod()
{
    if (s_IsDevelopmentBuild)
        s_UnityProfiler->BeginSample(s_MyPluginMarker);

    // Code I want to see in Unity Profiler as "MyPluginMethod".
    // ...

    if (s_IsDevelopmentBuild)
        s_UnityProfiler->EndSample(s_MyPluginMarker);
}

extern "C" void UNITY_INTERFACE_EXPORT UNITY_INTERFACE_API UnityPluginLoad(IUnityInterfaces* unityInterfaces)
{
    s_UnityProfiler = unityInterfaces->Get<IUnityProfiler>();
    if (s_UnityProfiler == NULL)
        return;
    s_IsDevelopmentBuild = s_UnityProfiler->IsAvailable() != 0;
    s_UnityProfiler->CreateMarker(&s_MyPluginMarker, "MyPluginMethod", kUnityProfilerCategoryOther, kUnityProfilerMarkerFlagDefault, 0);
}

extern "C" void UNITY_INTERFACE_EXPORT UNITY_INTERFACE_API UnityPluginUnload()
{
    s_UnityProfiler  = NULL;
}

IUnityProfilerCallbacks API callbacks

The native Profiler plug-in API provides an interface between Unity’s subsystems and third-party profiling APIs so you can use an external profiling tool to profile your Unity application. The IUnityProfilerCallbacks header exposes the API, which Unity stores in the <UnityInstallPath>\Editor\Data\PluginAPI folder of your Unity installation. (On macOS, right-click on the Unity application, and select Show Package Contents. The header is in Contents\PluginAPI).

The following Unity Profiler features help capture instrumentation data so you can analyze the performance of your application.

Profiler feature	Description
Categories	Unity groups profile data into categories (such as Rendering, Scripting and Animation), and assigns a color to each category. Color-coded categories help you visually distinguish the types of data in the Profiler window. The Profiler native plug-in API retrieves these colors so you can use them in an external profiling tool.
Usage flags	Usage flags act as a filter that reduce the amount of data that Unity sends to an external profiling tool. You can use usage flags to remove unnecessary information from the profiling data before Unity sends it to the external tool. The Profiler applies the following usage flags to event markers so that you can filter the data: Availability flagsthat flag whether a marker is available in the Unity Editor, a development player, or a release player. Verbosity levels that correlate to the type of the task you are doing in the Editor, and the level of information that task requires (for example, internal, debug, or user level).
Frame events	You can use the Profiler native plug-in API to perform frame-time analysis in an external profiling tool.
Thread profiling	Unity does a significant amount of work on threads (for example, the main thread, render thread and job system worker thread). You can use the Profiler native plug-in API to enable profiling on any thread.

To use the instrumentation data that the Unity Profiler generates in an external profiler, you can use these minimal set of callbacks in your C/C++ plug-in code that integrates the third-party profiler:

Callback	Function
RegisterCreateCategoryCallback	Registers a IUnityProfilerCreateCategoryCallback callback to get the Profiler categoryIdentifies the workload data for a Unity subsystem (for example, Rendering, Scripting and Animation categories). Unity applies color-coding to categories to visually distinguish between the types of data in the Profiler window. See in Glossary name and color whenever Unity creates a category.
RegisterCreateMarkerCallback	Registers a IUnityProfilerCreateMarkerCallback callback which is called whenever Unity creates a marker. Use it to get the name, Profiler category, and usage flags of a marker. The const UnityProfilerMarkerDesc* markerDesc parameter of the callback function represents a persistent pointer to the marker description which you can use to filter markers in RegisterMarkerEventCallback.
RegisterMarkerEventCallback	Registers a IUnityProfilerMarkerEventCallback callback that Unity invokes when single-shot, scoped, memory allocation, or garbage collection events happen. You can then use this callback to invoke the relevant functions in an external profiling tool. Note: Unity represents memory allocation events with the GC.Alloc marker, and garbage collection events with the GC.Collect markers.
RegisterFrameCallback	Encapsulates samples into logical frames so external profiling tools that don’t use frames can use these samples. Also registers a callback that the Unity Profiler runs when Unity starts the next logical CPU frame.
RegisterCreateThreadCallback	Registers a callback to get the internal thread name whenever Unity registers a thread for profiling.

Usage example

This example shows you how to pass Unity Profiler events to another profiler which has push/pop semantics. It provides two functions:

• void MyProfilerPushMarker(const char* name) - pushes a named marker.
• void MyProfilerPopMarker() - pops instrumentation marker.

The following example provides the minimal implementation required to pass begin and end instrumentation events from the Unity Profiler to the external profiler:

#include <IUnityInterface.h>
#include <IUnityProfilerCallbacks.h>

static IUnityProfilerCallbacks* s_UnityProfilerCallbacks = NULL;

static void UNITY_INTERFACE_API MyProfilerEventCallback(const UnityProfilerMarkerDesc* markerDesc, UnityProfilerMarkerEventType eventType, unsigned short eventDataCount, const UnityProfilerMarkerData* eventData, void* userData)
{
    switch (eventType)
    {
        case kUnityProfilerMarkerEventTypeBegin:
        {
            MyProfilerPushMarker(markerDesc->name);
            break;
        }
        case kUnityProfilerMarkerEventTypeEnd:
        {
            MyProfilerPopMarker();
            break;
        }
    }
}

static void UNITY_INTERFACE_API MyProfilerCreateMarkerCallback(const UnityProfilerMarkerDesc* markerDesc, void* userData)
{
    s_UnityProfilerCallbacks->RegisterMarkerEventCallback(markerDesc, MyProfilerEventCallback, NULL);
}

extern "C" void UNITY_INTERFACE_EXPORT UNITY_INTERFACE_API UnityPluginLoad(IUnityInterfaces* unityInterfaces)
{
    s_UnityProfilerCallbacks = unityInterfaces->Get<IUnityProfilerCallbacks>();
    s_UnityProfilerCallbacks->RegisterCreateMarkerCallback(&MyProfilerCreateMarkerCallback, NULL);
}

extern "C" void UNITY_INTERFACE_EXPORT UNITY_INTERFACE_API UnityPluginUnload()
{
    s_UnityProfilerCallbacks->UnregisterCreateMarkerCallback(&MyProfilerCreateMarkerCallback, NULL);
    s_UnityProfilerCallbacks->UnregisterMarkerEventCallback(NULL, &MyProfilerEventCallback, NULL);
}

Note: To unregister the given callback from all markers, run UnregisterEventCallback with the first parameter set to null.

UnitySystracePlugin example

You can register and unregister marker callbacks dynamically, once every frame. The following example minimizes profiling overhead by enabling and disabling callbacks, depending on a third party profile state.

| static void UNITY_INTERFACE_API SystraceFrameCallback(void* userData)
{
    bool isCapturing = ATrace_isEnabled();
    if (isCapturing != s_isCapturing)
    {
        s_isCapturing = isCapturing;
        if (isCapturing)
        {
            s_UnityProfilerCallbacks->
              RegisterCreateMarkerCallback(SystraceCreateEventCallback, NULL);
        }
        else
        {
            s_UnityProfilerCallbacks->
              UnregisterCreateMarkerCallback(SystraceCreateEventCallback, NULL);
            s_UnityProfilerCallbacks->
              UnregisterMarkerEventCallback(NULL, SystraceEventCallback, NULL);
        }
    }
}

Note: To unregister the given callback from all markers, run UnregisterEventCallback with the first parameter set to null.

Special markers

Unity has the following special markers that contain useful metadata:

• Profiler.DefaultMarker
• GC.Alloc

Profiler.DefaultMarker

The Profiler.DefaultMarker is a marker that Unity reserves for Profiler.BeginSample and Profiler.EndSample events.

In the example above, kUnityProfilerMarkerEventTypeBegin eventType corresponds to the Profiler.BeginSample event and has the following data:

• Int32: The UnityEngine.Object instance ID. This is 0 if the object is not specified.
• UInt16 array: The UTF16 string that is passed to Profiler.BeginSample. The size is in bytes.
• UInt32: The category index.

GC.Alloc

GC.Alloc is a marker that corresponds to garbage collection allocation. It has the following data:

• Int64: The size of the allocation.