Abstract: A software analysis system for acquiring, storing, and analyzing certain predetermined characteristics of a computer program includes a method and apparatus for acquiring certain lines of high-level language instruction code without the need for statistical sampling. Each line of instruction code generates at least one address in assembly language which is encoded with a tag and stored in a first-in, first-out memory. The memory output is asynchronous with its output such that tagged addresses are stored in real time but extracted from memory at a predetermined rate. This allows the system to acquire all software event of interest. Each tagged address is also marked with a time stamp so that the time between acquisition of each of the software events of interest may be analyzed to determine, for example, the length of time spent in a particular subroutine.