Blue Gene/L performance tools

  • Authors:
  • X. Martorell;N. Smeds;R. Walkup;J. R. Brunheroto;G. Almási;J. A. Gunnels;L. DeRose;J. Labarta;F. Escalé;J. Giménez;H. Servat;J. E. Moreira

  • Affiliations:
  • Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain;Center for Parallel Computers, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden;IBM Research Division, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York;IBM Research Division, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York;IBM Research Division, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York;IBM Research Division, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York;Cray Inc., Mendota Heights, Minnesota;European Center For Parallelism of Barcelona, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain;European Center For Parallelism of Barcelona, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain;European Center For Parallelism of Barcelona, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain;European Center For Parallelism of Barcelona, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain;IBM Systems and Technology Group, Rochester, Minnesota

  • Venue:
  • IBM Journal of Research and Development
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Good performance monitoring is the basis of modern performance analysis tools for application optimization. We are providing a variety of such performance analysis tools for the new Blue Gene®/L supercomputer. Those tools can be divided into two categories: single-node performance tools and multinode performance tools. From a single-node perspective, we provide standard interfaces and libraries, such as PAPI and libHPM, that provide access to the hardware performance counters for applications running on the Blue Gene/L compute nodes. From a multinode perspective, we focus on tools that analyze Message Passing Interface (MPI) behavior. Those tools work by first collecting message-passing trace data when a program runs. The trace data is then used by graphical interface tools that analyze the behavior of applications. Using the current prototype tools, we demonstrate their usefulness and applicability with case studies of application optimization.