'perf' is a performance counters subsystem in Linux. Performance counters are CPU hardware registers that count hardware events such as instructions executed and cache-misses suffered. These counters aid in profiling applications to detect hotspots in the application. 'perf' provides per task, per CPU and per-workload counters, sampling on top of these and source code event annotation.

The perf plug-in for Eclipse allows the developer to execute profiles in their applications in a seamless way, using quick launch actions and visualizing the results in an user-friendly interface.