Parallel Performance Tool EPPA: Documentation

Objectives  (Read also our EPPA PR-talk)

• To automate the measurement and analysis of the parallel performance.
• Your code is instrumented automatically as explained below and at runtime, the different phases of the parallel processing are measured (computation, communication, synchronisation, partitioning and blocking) and stored in the database. The Graphical Tool presents the result in a userfriendly way.

Download (for MPI)

• Instrumentation files (par library)
  
• library & header files 
  
• library & header files without PAPI
  
• code (cd parlib, make all)
• Analysis tools (above par library is included)
  
• binaries: EPPA (EPPA voor infogroep), ViewExp
  
• code (above par library is included, extract and make all)

PVM User Guide

MPI User Guide

The files & their purpose

• the executable EPPA
  
• the header files:  standardlib.h  (put them into PARDIR/include)
  
• the library: libpar.a (contains the necessary object files)
• mysql (in MYSQLDIR)
  

Include them in the projectfile as follow:

INCLUDEPATH    =  $(PARDIR)/include
LIBS           = -L$(MYSQLDIR)/lib -L$(PARDIR)/lib -lpar -lmysqlclient

Extra instrumentation

1. Enable/disable profiling (call before MPI_Init call!!)
• MPI_Pcontrol(0);  or  MPI_Pcontrol(DISABLE_PROFILING);  (default value)
  
• MPI_Pcontrol(1);  or  MPI_Pcontrol(ENABLE_PROFILING);  // to start the EPPA profiling
  
• MPI_Pcontrol(2);  or  MPI_Pcontrol(STOP_PROFILING);  // stop profiling, before a new profiling (eg EPPASeqProbe) can start
  
2. Application information 
• MPI_Pcontrol(APPLICATION, string); (call before MPI_Init call!!)
• MPI_Pcontrol(PROJECT, string); (call before MPI_Init call!!) to group applications into projects
  
• MPI_Pcontrol(APP_COMMENT, string); comment about the application
  
• MPI_Pcontrol(EXP_COMMENT,string);  comment about the experiment (can be changed in EPPA)
  
3. Application parameters
• MPI_Pcontrol(PROBLEM_SIZE, integer);
• MPI_Pcontrol(MASTER_IS_NOT_WORKING); EPPA will not count the master in the 'p'-parameter and in the efficiency
  
4. Computation phase parameters (call during the computation phase)
• MPI_Pcontrol(NBR_QUANTUMS, integer);
• MPI_Pcontrol(NBR_OPERATIONS, integer);
5. Type of computation phase (call at end of the computation phase)
• MPI_Pcontrol(SPECIFY_COMP_PHASE,  <phase>);
  
• MPI_Pcontrol(END_COMP_PHASE, <phase>);
  
• <phase>: USEFUL_WORK_PHASE, PARTITIONING_PHASE, SYNCHRONIZATION_PHASE
6. Start/Stop measurements (optional)
   
• MPI_Pcontrol(START_MEASURING); // your parallel application starts, after the MPI_Init call (which is the default begin of the time measurements)
  
• MPI_Pcontrol(STOP_MEASURING);  // your parallel application starts, before MPI_Finalize call (which is the default end of the time measurements)
7. Additional measurements
• MPI_Pcontrol(MEASUREMENT_VALUE, string name, double value);

Tool EPPA

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