Traditional feedback-directed optimization (FDO) is not widely used due to the significant computational overhead involved in using instrumented binaries. The described embodiments provide methods that eliminate the need for instrumented binaries by permitting the conversion of hardware-event sampling information into edge frequencies usable by FDO compilers. Some advantages include: the ability to collect feedback data on production systems; the ability to perform FDO on the OS kernel; and the ability to avoid disrupting timing paths from instrumented binaries.