Vortrag Prof. Barton Miller, 30.11.1998

[AURORA Project]

                            UNIVERSITAET WIEN 
            INSTITUT FUER SOFTWARETECHNIK UND PARALLELE SYSTEME
                              gemeinsam mit 
                                  VCPC 
           EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR PARALLEL COMPUTING AT VIENNA 
           
                      FWF Projekt SFB F011 "AURORA"


      EINLADUNG ZU EINEM VORTRAG IM RAHMEN DES INSTITUTS-KOLLOQUIUMS:
                
         
               The Paradyn Parallel Performance Tool Project
                   
 			   
                           Barton P. Miller
                      Computer Sciences Department
                        University of Wisconsin
                            bart@cs.wisc.edu

             
             
                 ZEIT: Montag, 30. 11. 1998, 17.00 Uhr c.t.
          ORT: Institut fuer Softwaretechnik und Parallele Systeme
                   1090 Wien, Liechtensteinstrasse 22, 
                          Seminarraum, Mezzanin


Abstract


Paradyn is a system for measuring the performance of parallel and distributed
programs.  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.  I also
will mention some of the current research issues that we are tackling:
improved dynamic code generation, instrumentation techniques for threaded
programs, applying dynamic instrumentation to the operating system kernel,
experiment management, and improved decision support.

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.