How CPU Sampling Works

This post explains the fundamental principles of CPU Sampling as implemented by the Visual Studio profiler. It details how sampling works by taking snapshots of the call stack at set intervals to estimate function execution time without significantly impacting program performance. The post illustrates this with a manual example and then shows how the Visual Studio CPU Usage Tool automates this process, achieving more accurate results. It also discusses the statistical confidence intervals for sample counts and the overhead associated with sampling.