Virtual reality and parallel systems performance analysis

Abstract

Recording and analyzing the dynamics of application program, system software, and hardware interactions are the keys to understanding and tuning the performance of massively parallel systems. Because massively parallel systems contain hundreds or thousands of processors, each potentially with many dynamic performance metrics, the performance data occupy a sparsely populated, high-dimensional space. These dynamic performance metrics for each processor dene a group of evolving, n-dimensional points. Understanding the dynamic \shape" of these metric paths is only possible if one can examine multiple projections. We have implemented an immersive virtual world, called Avatar, that shows all the possible three-dimensional projections of a sparsely populated, n-dimensional metric space. The presentation metaphor is a three-dimensional generalization of a two-dimensional scatterplot matrix. Users can walk inside a single scatterplot cube, y about the cube of scatterplot cubes, control selected characteristics of the scatterplot display, listen to the sounds of statistical data attributes, and interactively modify application behavior and performance in real time.

Searching and Analysis of Interface and Visualization Metaphors

“…Such combination on the one hand preserves principles of structural correspondence between model entities and visual objects, on the other -provides successful spatial placement of images. (See for example (Reed et al, 1995) and (Bajdalin & Ismagilov 2006).) Let's carry out the analysis of a room metaphor from two positions: the room metaphor itself and how it is possible to represent the information with its help.…”

“…And if our way of formal transformation values {X} to notes may generate melody, that, probably, {X} has interesting properties, which may be found out by means of a metaphor. (One can consider sonification as a special form of visualization see, for example, (Reed et al, 1995), (Osawa, 1998). There are examples of cognitive visualization with music in (Zenkin1991)..)…”

An on‐line performance visualization technology

“…A snapshot of the view specific performance visualizations [12]. Avatar [19] uses Pablo to study two types of high-performance input/output of the Portable Parallel File System (PPFS): parallel scientific codes and WWW servers. The Rivet project [17] integrates new visualization tools into the design and evaluation process of a variety of computer system components, specifically processor and memory systems, multiprocessor architectures, compilers, operating systems, and networks.…”

LBF: a performance metric for program reorganization

“…However, all of these tools focus on the measurement and analysis of a specific program for a single execution. One type of tool that permits programmers to evaluate alternatives is application steering [7,19]. Application steering permits programmers to change selected aspects of their program while it is in execution.…”