Virtual Institute — High Productivity Supercomputing

6th VI-HPS Tuning Workshop (SARA, Netherlands)

Date

May 26-28, 2010

Location

SARA, Amsterdam, NL

Goals

This workshop will:
  • give an overview of the VI-HPS programming tools suite
  • explain the functionality of individual tools, and how to use them effectively
  • offer hands-on experience and expert assistance using the tools

The workshop will be held in English and run from 09:00 to not later than 17:30 each day, with breaks for lunch and refreshments. Additional presentations may be scheduled on demand.

Schedule

Day 1 Wed, May 26th
08:30 registration & laptop set-up
09:00 Welcome & Introduction to VI-HPS (slides)
Building and running the NPB-MPI-BT example code (slides)
09:45 The Marmot Correctness Checking Tool (slides)
10:30 break
11:00 The Scalasca Toolset for Automatic Performance Analysis (slides), (more slides)
12:00 lunch
13:00 The Vampir Toolset for Visual Trace Analysis (slides)
14:00 Hardware counter analysis with PAPI (slides)
14:30 break
15:00 The Periscope Tool for Automatic Performance Analysis (slides), (more slides), (even more slides)
15:45 The TAU Toolset for Sophisticated Profile Analysis (slides)
16:30 Review of day and schedule for rest of workshop.
17:00 adjourn
Day 2 Thu, May 27th (flexible schedule according to your preferences)
09:00 more about Scalasca + hands-on
11:00 more about Marmot + hands-on
12:00 lunch
13:00 more about Vampir + hands-on
15:00 more about TAU + hands-on
16:00 more about Periscope + hands-on
17:00 Review of day and schedule for tomorrow
17:30 adjourn
socializing and drinks
Day 3 Fri, May 28th
09:00 Coaching to apply tools to check, analyze & tune participants' own code(s). Additional presentations covering in-depth and advanced tool use, scheduled according to demand.
12:00 lunch
13:00 Review of workshop, feedback about participants' experiences with tools
14:00 adjourn or continue with work to 16:30

Classroom capacity is limited, therefore priority will be given to applicants with codes already running on the workshop computer systems, and those bringing codes from similar systems to work on. Participants are therefore encouraged to prepare their own MPI, OpenMP and hybrid OpenMP/MPI parallel application codes for analysis.

Participants are expected to use their own notebook computers for the first day tutorial using a Live-DVD for hands-on exercises: it may be possible to arrange alternatives for those who don't have access to an x86-compatible notebook computer with DVD drive, if the organizers are informed in advance.

VI-HPS Tools

  • MARMOT is a free correctness checking tool for MPI programs developed by TUD-ZIH and HLRS.
  • PAPI is a free library interfacing to hardware performance counters developed by UTK-ICL, used by Periscope, Scalasca, VampirTrace, and multiple other tools.
  • Periscope is a prototype automatic performance analysis tool using a distributed online search for performance bottlenecks being developed by TUM.
  • Scalasca is an open-source toolset developed by JSC that can be used to analyze the performance behaviour of parallel applications and automatically identify inefficiencies.
  • Vampir is a commercial framework and graphical analysis tool developed by TUD-ZIH to display and analyze trace files.
  • VampirTrace is an open-source library for generating event trace files from C, C++, Fortran, and Java codes, which can be analyzed and visualized by Vampir.
  • TAU (as a guest tool) is a portable profiling and tracing toolkit for performance analysis of parallel programs written in Fortran, C, C++, Java, Python.


Hardware and Software Platforms

The VI-HPS tools support and are installed on a wide variety of HPC platforms, including:

The local SARA systems are expected to be the primary platforms for the workshop, with priority for improved job turnaround and local system support. Other systems where up-to-date versions of the tools are installed can also be used when preferred. Participants are expected to already possess user accounts on the systems they intend to use, and should be familiar with the procedures for compiling and running parallel applications in batch queues on the systems.

Further information and registration

For registration please send an email to SARA's help desk with the subject "Registration for 6th VI-HPS Tuning Workshop" with your name, affiliation, contact information, and a short description of your own application code (if any).

Contact

Andreas Knüpfer, phone +49 351 463 38323