An interactive visualization framework for performance analysis

Abstract

Input-sensitive profiling is a recent methodology for analyzing how the performance of a routine scales as a function of the workload size. As increasingly more detailed profiles are collected by an input-sensitive profiler, the information conveyed to a user can quickly become overwhelming. In this paper, we present an interactive graphical tool called aprof-plot for visualizing performance profiles. Exploiting curve fitting techniques, aprof-plot can estimate the asymptotic complexity of each routine, pointing the attention of the programmer to the most critical routines of an application. A variety of routine-based charts can be automatically generated by our tool, allowing the developer to analyze the performance scalability of a routine. Several examples based on real-world applications are discussed, showing how to conduct an effective performance investigation using aprof-plot.

FuzzPlanner: Visually Assisting the Design of Firmware Fuzzing Campaigns

“…Visual analytics and fuzzing. Visual Analytics has been valuable in addressing research challenges in software testing and program analysis, including static and dynamic techniques [3,8,16,18,30]. Additionally, it has been applied to cybersecurity contexts, such as malware analysis [1,46] and vulnerability analysis [2,7].…”