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US/Venezuela Workshop on High Performance Computing 2000
Seminario EEUU/Venezuela de Computación de Alto Rendimiento 2000

Barton P. Miller
University of Wisconsin

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The Paradyn Parallel Performance Tool Project

Abstract

Paradyn is a system for measuring the performance of parallel and distributed program. Paradyn contains two key technologies that allows it to measure large-scale, heterogeneous programs, without requiring source code modifications, recompiling, or even relinking, measure already-running programs (such as servers), and help automate the search for performance bottlenecks.

The first technology is dynamic instrumentation, which allows us to insert, change, and remove instrumentation code from a running program. With dynamic instrumentation, we modify the program while it is executing. At the moment that a request is made for performance data, Paradyn inserts the necessary instrumentation into the code. By deferring instrumentation decisions until runtime, we are able dynamically control the amount of overhead we cause. The dynamic instrumentation is now encapsulated in the DynInst API, available as a library. This API allows any tool builder access to Paradyn's ability to patch binary programs during execution. This API offers a machine independent interface to machine-level code patching.

Paradyn's second technology, automation of the searching for performance bottlenecks, is embodied in the Performance Consultant (PC). The PC is able to direct the dynamic instrumentation to help locate parts of the program that are consuming the most resources.

I will describe the main features and mechanisms in Paradyn, including new Performance Consultant techniques that use the program's call graph and results from previous runs of the program.

The current release of Paradyn runs on Solaris (SPARC and x86), AIX, IBM SP-2, Windows/NT, or heterogeneous combinations of the these systems. A preliminary version is under test for the DEC Unix (Alpha). Current ports under development include Linux and SGI Irix.


Last modified: Tue Nov 23 09:51:20 CST 1999 by bart