A method of acquiring software profile information of a target software application includes receiving a programmed interrupt while executing an application in a computer system, servicing the interrupt such that call stack information is acquired and processing the call stack information to produce statistical information concerning function calls. The call stack information includes program counter and other information which is derived from the target application as well as operating system. Some or all of the call stack information may be recorded. The statistical information includes statistics concerning the number of samples wherein a series of functions calls are included in the call stack information and the number of samples wherein a set of function calls are at the top of the call stack information.