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Instrumentation, performance visualization, and debugging tools for multiprocessors

Author
Yan, Jerry C.
Published
Dec 1, 1991.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Fineman, Charles E. and Hontalas, Philip J.
Online Version

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Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available.
Free-to-read Unrestricted online access
Summary
The need for computing power has forced a migration from serial computation on a single processor to parallel processing on multiprocessor architectures. However, without effective means to monitor (and visualize) program execution, debugging, and tuning parallel programs becomes intractably difficult as program complexity increases with the number of processors. Research on performance evaluation tools for multiprocessors is being carried out at ARC. Besides investigating new techniques for instrumenting, monitoring, and presenting the state of parallel program execution in a coherent and user-friendly manner, prototypes of software tools are being incorporated into the run-time environments of various hardware testbeds to evaluate their impact on user productivity. Our current tool set, the Ames Instrumentation Systems (AIMS), incorporates features from various software systems developed in academia and industry. The execution of FORTRAN programs on the Intel iPSC/860 can be automatically instrumented and monitored. Performance data collected in this manner can be displayed graphically on workstations supporting X-Windows. We have successfully compared various parallel algorithms for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications in collaboration with scientists from the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Systems Division. By performing these comparisons, we show that performance monitors and debuggers such as AIMS are practical and can illuminate the complex dynamics that occur within parallel programs.
Other Subject(s)
Collection
NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
Note
Document ID: 19920013475.
Accession ID: 92N22718.
NASA, Washington, Technology 2001: The Second National Technology Transfer Conference and Exposition, Volume 2; p 377-385.
Terms of Use and Reproduction
No Copyright.
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