An integrated performance analysis tool for SPMD data-parallel programs

Abstract

A new generation of data parallel languages have been proposed whereby a user specifies how data structures are to be distributed amongst the processor nodes of a distributed-memory machine. Based on this information, the compiler then generates code for the parallel application. Although this approach significantly simplifies the development of the initial version of a parallel application, selection of good data distributions leading to efficient computations is often quite difficult. Therefore, performance debuggers are needed to yield insights into the data distribution effects. On the other hand, most of the existing approaches to performance debugging are very general and thus do not provide the user feedback in terms of the high level programming model or the source code of the parallel application. In this paper, we describe a novel approach to performance debugging of data parallel programs. The design and implementation of a visual performance debugger is described that is specifically targeted to meet the performance debugging requirements of a data-parallel programming model based on user-specified data distributions. The performance debugger is part of an integrated programming environment, called EPPP, which also supports a data parallel compiler and a parallel architecture simulator. Thus development and performance debugging of an application may be done either on the real hardware or by using the simulator. The code for EPPP can be obtained free of cost (contact web address, http://www.crim.ca/apar).