US Patent 8935574 Correlating traces in a computing system

An apparatus, processor, and method for synchronizing trace data. A processor includes multiple cores, and each core operates at a different local clock frequency. A global clock is distributed to each core, and a timestamp is generated using the global clock and the local clock. The timestamp and a local clock saturation value are included in each trace entry, and the local clock saturation value is equal to the ratio between the local clock and the global clock. The trace entries from separate cores are time-correlated in a post-processing phase based on the timestamp and local clock saturation values.