
Simon MacMullen contributed to the google/perfetto repository by building and refining advanced tracing and analytics features for Android system performance. He engineered data sources and UI integrations for granular CPU and battery usage tracking, leveraging C++, SQL, and TypeScript to enable detailed attribution and visualization of resource consumption. Simon’s work included modularizing plugins, optimizing SQL queries for large-scale trace analysis, and enhancing reliability through robust error handling and state management. He also extended the Perfetto SQL engine with regex-based string replacement, improving data transformation capabilities. His contributions demonstrated deep expertise in system programming, data processing, and performance diagnostics.
March 2026 (2026-03) focused on strengthening data reliability and dashboard flexibility for google/perfetto. Key observability improvements were delivered to better monitor data collection reliability and enable richer analytics across traces. The team also extended the dashboard configuration to support vendor-specific aggregation, enabling more actionable cross-trace insights. These changes reduce data gaps, support proactive diagnostics, and enhance operator productivity through clearer telemetry and more flexible dashboards.
March 2026 (2026-03) focused on strengthening data reliability and dashboard flexibility for google/perfetto. Key observability improvements were delivered to better monitor data collection reliability and enable richer analytics across traces. The team also extended the dashboard configuration to support vendor-specific aggregation, enabling more actionable cross-trace insights. These changes reduce data gaps, support proactive diagnostics, and enhance operator productivity through clearer telemetry and more flexible dashboards.
February 2026 — Delivered Perfetto SQL enhancement: regexp_replace_simple function, enabling regex-based string replacement directly in SQL queries. This expands data transformation capabilities in Perfetto and reduces post-processing. Implemented in the Trace Processor with commit ee06ccabe5f70a082aead2e3788cdb3c90c654fa, tied to issue #4763 and bug b/483616653. Major bugs fixed: none reported this month. Overall impact: more powerful, expressive queries and faster data analysis workflows for performance analytics. Technologies/skills demonstrated: Perfetto SQL engine, Trace Processor, C++, regex integration, issue tracking, code review, and release readiness.
February 2026 — Delivered Perfetto SQL enhancement: regexp_replace_simple function, enabling regex-based string replacement directly in SQL queries. This expands data transformation capabilities in Perfetto and reduces post-processing. Implemented in the Trace Processor with commit ee06ccabe5f70a082aead2e3788cdb3c90c654fa, tied to issue #4763 and bug b/483616653. Major bugs fixed: none reported this month. Overall impact: more powerful, expressive queries and faster data analysis workflows for performance analytics. Technologies/skills demonstrated: Perfetto SQL engine, Trace Processor, C++, regex integration, issue tracking, code review, and release readiness.
October 2025 monthly summary for google/perfetto: Delivered the Day Explorer: Display Device Usage Data feature, updating the data source from behaviors to device usages. This included renaming functions and SQL queries to reflect the new data source and applying capitalization fixes in the UI. The change is captured in commit f3b1787ab1aba6c27dc97c0e4cb704137f0bba26 with message "Update Day Explorer plugin to read usages, not behaviors. (#3100)".
October 2025 monthly summary for google/perfetto: Delivered the Day Explorer: Display Device Usage Data feature, updating the data source from behaviors to device usages. This included renaming functions and SQL queries to reflect the new data source and applying capitalization fixes in the UI. The change is captured in commit f3b1787ab1aba6c27dc97c0e4cb704137f0bba26 with message "Update Day Explorer plugin to read usages, not behaviors. (#3100)".
September 2025 performance summary for google/perfetto focusing on delivering high-value tracing capabilities, improving data accuracy, and boosting performance through modular architecture and targeted optimizations.
September 2025 performance summary for google/perfetto focusing on delivering high-value tracing capabilities, improving data accuracy, and boosting performance through modular architecture and targeted optimizations.
Monthly work summary for 2025-08 focused on delivering granular CPU usage analytics and improving the data path for per-UID tracing in Perfetto. Key outcomes include the introduction of Per-UID CPU Usage Analytics with On-Demand Emission for the google/perfetto repository, refactoring CPU-per-UID sources into a reusable utility, and restructuring the package list data source into parsing and writing phases. A new Trace Processor module and counter enable granular per-UID tracking. Commits implementing these changes include 6960e45b303439c35e06af05d763869bda646d8f (Add "on use" mode for packages list data source. (#2365)) and b123a57949ead368fd3013f675415fcb22f24a1d (Add support for CPU-per-UID data source to Trace Processor (#1983)).
Monthly work summary for 2025-08 focused on delivering granular CPU usage analytics and improving the data path for per-UID tracing in Perfetto. Key outcomes include the introduction of Per-UID CPU Usage Analytics with On-Demand Emission for the google/perfetto repository, refactoring CPU-per-UID sources into a reusable utility, and restructuring the package list data source into parsing and writing phases. A new Trace Processor module and counter enable granular per-UID tracking. Commits implementing these changes include 6960e45b303439c35e06af05d763869bda646d8f (Add "on use" mode for packages list data source. (#2365)) and b123a57949ead368fd3013f675415fcb22f24a1d (Add support for CPU-per-UID data source to Trace Processor (#1983)).
Monthly performance summary for 2025-07 focused on strengthening concurrency safety in the Metatrace subsystem of google/perfetto. Delivered a thread-local refactor to enable safe multi-threaded usage and to prevent cross-thread state leakage within the tracing pipeline.
Monthly performance summary for 2025-07 focused on strengthening concurrency safety in the Metatrace subsystem of google/perfetto. Delivered a thread-local refactor to enable safe multi-threaded usage and to prevent cross-thread state leakage within the tracing pipeline.
June 2025 monthly summary for google/perfetto: Delivered a new data source for CPU time collection by UID and CPU cluster, enabling granular attribution of CPU usage to apps and system components. Implemented configurations, data structures, and probes to support per-UID CPU time tracking, boosting observability and performance diagnostics. Fixed a permission-related initialization issue by removing an explicit startTrackingUidTimes() call, reducing setup complexity and potential failures.
June 2025 monthly summary for google/perfetto: Delivered a new data source for CPU time collection by UID and CPU cluster, enabling granular attribution of CPU usage to apps and system components. Implemented configurations, data structures, and probes to support per-UID CPU time tracking, boosting observability and performance diagnostics. Fixed a permission-related initialization issue by removing an explicit startTrackingUidTimes() call, reducing setup complexity and potential failures.
May 2025 monthly summary for google/perfetto. Delivered three key features enhancing battery tracing and analytics, plus robust improvements to data quality and testing. Highlights include: AndroidLongBatteryTracing Refactor and Enablement—grouped device state tracks under a common 'Device State' group, removed unused allowlist, and re-enabled long battery tracing across all traces; Day Explorer UI for battery blame data—adds Day Explorer to Perfetto UI to view categorized energy and behavioral data with improved defaults; Kernel wakelocks data quality and testing improvements—fixes for duration calculations, exposes awake duration, corrects GROUP BY behavior after renames, adds defensive checks, and introduces difftest coverage. Major bugs fixed centered on wakelocks data reliability, yielding more accurate power analyses. Overall impact includes more reliable battery analytics, faster debugging of power issues, and stronger test coverage. Technologies/skills demonstrated include Android tracing, Perfetto data modeling, UI integration, data quality engineering, and difftest testing.
May 2025 monthly summary for google/perfetto. Delivered three key features enhancing battery tracing and analytics, plus robust improvements to data quality and testing. Highlights include: AndroidLongBatteryTracing Refactor and Enablement—grouped device state tracks under a common 'Device State' group, removed unused allowlist, and re-enabled long battery tracing across all traces; Day Explorer UI for battery blame data—adds Day Explorer to Perfetto UI to view categorized energy and behavioral data with improved defaults; Kernel wakelocks data quality and testing improvements—fixes for duration calculations, exposes awake duration, corrects GROUP BY behavior after renames, adds defensive checks, and introduces difftest coverage. Major bugs fixed centered on wakelocks data reliability, yielding more accurate power analyses. Overall impact includes more reliable battery analytics, faster debugging of power issues, and stronger test coverage. Technologies/skills demonstrated include Android tracing, Perfetto data modeling, UI integration, data quality engineering, and difftest testing.
April 2025: Perfetto delivered two high-value changes in google/perfetto that improve UX relevance and data integrity for tracing. - Feature: Long Battery UX conditional rendering. Only show the long battery user experience for allowed trace session names to avoid noise and irrelevant information. Commit 4734f3abe271775d3cf85ae549c2fb8ff81932bc (#1148). - Bug fix: Kernel wakelock data anomaly handling. Detect, ignore, and log unusual results from SuspendControlService; introduce error flags to detect zero or non-monotonic values and prevent corrupt trace data. Commit 791082540417679112576973dea16ce801aa95c2 (#1166). Overall impact: Higher data quality, reduced UI noise, and faster troubleshooting for battery-related tracing; more reliable wakelock data. Technologies demonstrated: UI conditional rendering, anomaly detection and logging, error flagging, tracing/data integrity, C++ Perfetto codebase.
April 2025: Perfetto delivered two high-value changes in google/perfetto that improve UX relevance and data integrity for tracing. - Feature: Long Battery UX conditional rendering. Only show the long battery user experience for allowed trace session names to avoid noise and irrelevant information. Commit 4734f3abe271775d3cf85ae549c2fb8ff81932bc (#1148). - Bug fix: Kernel wakelock data anomaly handling. Detect, ignore, and log unusual results from SuspendControlService; introduce error flags to detect zero or non-monotonic values and prevent corrupt trace data. Commit 791082540417679112576973dea16ce801aa95c2 (#1166). Overall impact: Higher data quality, reduced UI noise, and faster troubleshooting for battery-related tracing; more reliable wakelock data. Technologies demonstrated: UI conditional rendering, anomaly detection and logging, error flagging, tracing/data integrity, C++ Perfetto codebase.
Monthly summary for 2025-03 for google/perfetto focusing on reliability improvements: delivered critical wakelock analysis bug fixes and improved log-scale tooltip accuracy, with traceable commits. Impact: more robust data, fewer anomalies, clearer visualization for users.
Monthly summary for 2025-03 for google/perfetto focusing on reliability improvements: delivered critical wakelock analysis bug fixes and improved log-scale tooltip accuracy, with traceable commits. Impact: more robust data, fewer anomalies, clearer visualization for users.
January 2025 monthly summary for google/perfetto: Highlights include delivering kernel wakelocks data source with ingestion and delta-encoded duration optimization; refactoring wakeup and screen state analysis into the core library; and a network type detection fix for Android long battery tracing. These work items improved power profiling accuracy, data processing performance, and maintainability, driving better energy insights and more reliable network metrics in production.
January 2025 monthly summary for google/perfetto: Highlights include delivering kernel wakelocks data source with ingestion and delta-encoded duration optimization; refactoring wakeup and screen state analysis into the core library; and a network type detection fix for Android long battery tracing. These work items improved power profiling accuracy, data processing performance, and maintainability, driving better energy insights and more reliable network metrics in production.
November 2024: Stabilized Perfetto data flow and visuals through targeted bug fixes, a documentation improvement, and a reliability enhancement in slice handling. Delivered four key items: unknown enum handling in the proto-to-args parser; independent y-axes for battery_stats visualizations; suspend_enter slice termination bug fix via a new state machine; and documentation for update-statsd-descriptor usage. Impact: reduced data type errors, improved visualization accuracy, and more robust slice lifecycle, enabling better performance analysis and faster onboarding. Technologies/skills demonstrated: parser robustness, visualization axis management, state-machine design, code refactoring, and documentation contributions.
November 2024: Stabilized Perfetto data flow and visuals through targeted bug fixes, a documentation improvement, and a reliability enhancement in slice handling. Delivered four key items: unknown enum handling in the proto-to-args parser; independent y-axes for battery_stats visualizations; suspend_enter slice termination bug fix via a new state machine; and documentation for update-statsd-descriptor usage. Impact: reduced data type errors, improved visualization accuracy, and more robust slice lifecycle, enabling better performance analysis and faster onboarding. Technologies/skills demonstrated: parser robustness, visualization axis management, state-machine design, code refactoring, and documentation contributions.
October 2024 monthly summary for google/perfetto development work. Focused on cleansing the atom registry, improving readability of desktop mode event tracking, and enhancing data visualization in the UI to strengthen observability and debugging capabilities.
October 2024 monthly summary for google/perfetto development work. Focused on cleansing the atom registry, improving readability of desktop mode event tracking, and enhancing data visualization in the UI to strengthen observability and debugging capabilities.

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