Methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture for analyzing memory use

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture consistent with the present invention assist a programmer in the optimization of an application program by displaying information about memory use in a manner useful to the programmer. A programmer selects an application program that he wishes to optimize. The application program is submitted to an instrumentation process that inserts additional instructions into the code of the application program so that, when executed, the instrumented code produces an output file, called a trace output file. The trace output file contains information about memory accesses. The trace output file is then submitted to a second program, or visualizer, that visually displays the memory accesses using a different visual effect for each type of memory access operation. The visualizer may be run at different speeds, forwards or backwards, paused, or may step through the memory accesses frame-by-frame. This visual representation of memory accesses allows programmers to recognize patterns of memory use that can be used to optimize the application program.