GPUVis is a GPU trace visualizer that presents an interactive timeline of GPU scheduler activity, primarily intended for Linux environments. The tool reads trace data and renders it in a graphical interface, allowing developers to inspect when and how GPU commands are executed and to identify performance bottlenecks or scheduling issues. It is especially useful when combined with system-level tracing tools such as ftrace or perf, providing a GPU‑focused view that complements broader system profilers like perfetto. Originally released by Valve Software in 2019, the project is made available under the MIT license. The copyright notice in the repository states “Copyright 2019 Valve Software All Rights Reserved” and explicitly declares that the code is MIT licensed, permitting free use, modification, and distribution subject to the standard license conditions. The visual interface of GPUVis is built with Dear ImGui, an immediate‑mode graphical user interface library. The repository credits Omar Cornut as the primary developer of Dear ImGui and notes that the early version of the library was supported by Media Molecule and first used internally on the game Tearaway. Dear ImGui itself is also MIT licensed. Beyond the UI toolkit, GPUVis incorporates a range of open‑source components: it uses the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) which is zlib‑licensed, the gl3w OpenGL loader (public domain), and the stb family of single‑header libraries (stb_textedit.h, stb_truetype.h, stb_rectpack.h) by Sean Barrett, which are in the public domain. For font rendering it bundles several true‑type fonts—ProggyClean.ttf, ProggyTiny.ttf (MIT licensed by Tristan Grimmer), Roboto‑Regular.ttf, Roboto‑Condensed.ttf (Apache 2.0 by Christian Robertson), and DroidSans.ttf (Apache 2.0 by Steve Matteson). Additional dependencies include trace‑cmd (GNU GPL v2) for trace processing, miniz (MIT licensed) for compression, stlini (author‑credited license), ya_getopt (2‑clause BSD), noc_file_dialog.h (MIT), ucm cmake macros (MIT), SMHasher (MIT), the {fmt} library (2‑clause BSD), and RapidJSON (MIT). This mixture of permissive licenses allows GPUVis to be redistributed freely while acknowledging the varied origins of its building blocks. By tying together these libraries, GPUVis offers a lightweight, dependency‑rich visualizer that can be compiled and run on modern Linux distributions to examine GPU trace data captured via kernel tracing mechanisms. The project’s README links to a wiki for further documentation and provides a screenshot illustrating the typical trace timeline view. While the source does not detail exact usage instructions, the description and component list make clear that GPUVis is positioned as a specialized, open‑source alternative for developers seeking insight into GPU scheduler behavior without relying on proprietary vendor tools. The combination of permissive licensing and integration of well‑known open‑source libraries means that the visualizer can be adapted or extended by the community, and its MIT‑licensed core encourages downstream projects to incorporate or modify the visualization code as needed. GPUVis thus serves as a concrete example of how tracing data can be turned into an accessible graphical display, filling a niche between low‑level kernel event capture and high‑level system profiling suites. },
The article describes GPUVis as an open-source GPU trace visualizer that presents an interactive timeline of GPU scheduler activity, and notes that the README provides a screenshot illustrating the typical trace timeline view.