HARDWARE SUPPORT FOR OS-CENTRIC PERFORMANCE MONITORING WITH DATA COLLECTION

A system, method, apparatus and integrated circuit are provided for collecting runtime performance data with a set of hardware timers under control of a dedicated hardware control register by connecting a central processing unit (CPU) and memory to a timer block bank having a plurality of timer instances which are selectively enabled and activated to collect runtime performance data during execution of application code by measuring specified software execution events, where the dedicated hardware control register includes a plurality of register fields for independently controlling activation behavior of the plurality of timer instances in response to a single write operation to all register fields in the hardware control register.