The drcachesim trace format includes information intended for use by core simulators as well as pure cache simulators. For traces that are not filtered by an online first-level cache, each data reference is preceded by the instruction fetch entry for the instruction that issued the data request, which includes the instruction encoding with the opcode and operands. Additionally, on x86, string loop instructions involve a single insruction fetch followed by a loop of loads and/or stores. A drcachesim trace includes a special "no-fetch" instruction entry per iteration so that core simulators have the instruction information to go along with each load and store, while cache simulators can ignore these "no-fetch" entries and avoid incorrectly inflating instruction fetch statistics.

Traces include scheduling markers providing the timestamp and hardware thread identifier on each thread transition, allowing a simulator to more closely match the actual hardware if so desired.

Traces also include markers indicating disruptions in user mode control flow such as signal handler entry and exit.

Offline traces explicitly identify whether each conditional branch was taken or not, and include the actual target of indirect branches, for convenience to avoid having to read either the subsequent entry or the kernel transfer event marker (or infer branch behavior for rseq aborts):

801394      601853:     1159769 ifetch       2 byte(s) @ 0x00007fc2c3aa91e3 7f 1b                jnle   $0x00007fc2c3aa9200 (untaken)
801395      601854:     1159769 ifetch       4 byte(s) @ 0x00007fc2c3aa91e5 48 83 c4 10          add    $0x10, %rsp
801396      601855:     1159769 ifetch       1 byte(s) @ 0x00007fc2c3aa91e9 5b                   pop    %rbx
801397      601855:     1159769 read         8 byte(s) @ 0x00007fff8044f6c0 by PC 0x00007fc2c3aa91e9
801398      601856:     1159769 ifetch       1 byte(s) @ 0x00007fc2c3aa91ea c3                   ret (target 0x7fc2c3aa81c1)
801399      601856:     1159769 read         8 byte(s) @ 0x00007fff8044f6c8 by PC 0x00007fc2c3aa91ea
801400      601857:     1159769 ifetch       2 byte(s) @ 0x00007fc2c3aa81c1 89 c5                mov    %eax, %ebp

Filtered traces (filtered via -L0_filter) include the dynamic (pre-filtered) per-thread instruction count in a dynamorio::drmemtrace::TRACE_MARKER_TYPE_INSTRUCTION_COUNT marker at each thread buffer boundary and at thread exit.