Instrumentation database system for performance analysis of parallel scientific applications

The complexity and computational intensity of scientific computing has fueled research on parallel computing and performance analysis. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach to performance analysis of large parallel programs. At the core of this approach is an instrumentation database (IDB) that enables comparative analysis of parallel code performance across architectures and algorithms. The basis of the IDB approach is scalable collection of performance data so that problem size and run-time environments do not affect the amount of information collected. This is achieved by uncoupling performance data collection from the underlying architecture and associating it with the control flow graph of the program. An important contribution of the IDB approach is the use of database technology to map program structure onto relational schema that represents the control flow hierarchy, its corresponding statistical data, and static information that describes the execution environment. To demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach, we have implemented a POSIX compliant probe library, automated instrumentation tool, front-end visualization programs, database schema using an object-relational DBMS (PostgreSQL), and SQL queries. We also developed a methodology, based on these tools, for interactive performance analysis and demonstrated this methodology on several different parallel scientific applications. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.