Integrated visualization of parallel program performance data

Abstract

Performance tuning a parallel application involves integrating performance data from many components of the system, including the message passing library, performance monitoring tool, resource manager, operating system, and the application itself. The current practice of visualizing these data streams using a separate, customized tool for each source is inconvenient from a usability perspective, and there is no easy way to visualize the data in an integrated fashion. We demonstrate a solution to this problem using Devise, a generic visualization tool which is designed to allow an arbitrary number of different but related data streams to be integrated and explored visually in a flexible manner. We display data emanating from a variety of sources side by side in three case studies. First we interface the Paradyn parallel performance tool and Devise, using two simple data export modules and Paradyn's simple visualization interface. We show several Devise/Paradyn visualizations which are useful for performance tuning parallel codes, and which incorporate data from Unix utilities and application output. Next we describe the visualization of trace data from a parallel application running in a Condor cluster of workstations. Finally we demonstrate the utility of Devise visualizations in a study of Condor cluster activity.