(Description of Seminar 4)
Sep. 23, 1997
On last wednesday, Sep. 23, Dr. Oscar Naim gave us a lecture about Paradyn Parallel Performance Tools. Dr. Oscar Naim is a professor of Computer Science in University of Wisconsin Madison.
Paradyn is a performance measurement tool for parallel and distributed programs. Paradyn uses several novel technologies so that it scales to long running programs (hours or days) and large (thousand node) systems, and automates much of the search for performance bottlenecks. It can provide precise performance data down to the procedure and statement level.
Paradyn is based on a dynamic notion of performance instrumentation and measurement. Unmodified executable files are placed into execution and then performance instrumentation is inserted into the application program and modified during execution. The instrumentation is controlled by the Performance Consultant module, that automatically directs the placement of instrumentation. The Performance Consultant has a well-defined notion of performance bottlenecks and program structure, so that it can associate bottlenecks with specific causes and specific parts of a program. Paradyn controls its instrumentation overhead by monitoring the cost of its data collection, limiting its instrumentation to a (user controllable) threshold.
The instrumentation in Paradyn can easily be configured to accept new operating system, hardware, and application specific performance data. It also provides an open interface for performance visualization, and a simple programming library to allow these visualizations to interface to Paradyn.
Paradyn can gather and present performance data in terms of high-level parallel languages (such as data parallel Fortran) and can measure programs on massively parallel computers, workstation clusters, and heterogeneous combinations of these systems.