What is the performance counter peripheral in the Nios II kit and how do I use it?

Description

The performance counter peripheral is a block of counters for timing sections in your software. With it you can accurately measure execution-time taken by blocks of C-code.  Simple, efficient, minimally-intrusive macros allow you to mark the start and end of blocks-of-interest in your program. For more information, refer the readme in the following location: <Nios II installation>/documents/performance_counter_readme.html.