EZTrace: A Generic Framework for Performance Analysis

François Trahay, François Rué, Mathieu Faverge, Yutaka Ishikawa, Raymond Namyst, Jack J. Dongarra

Abstract: Modern supercomputers with multi-core nodes enhanced by accelerators, as well as hybrid programming models introduce more complexity in modern applications. Exploiting efficiently all the resources requires a complex analysis of the performance of applications in order to detect time-consuming sections. We present eztrace, a generic trace generation framework that aims at providing a simple way to analyze applications. eztrace is based on plugins that allow it to trace different programming models such as MPI, pthread or OpenMP as well as user-defined libraries or applications. eztrace uses two steps: one to collect the basic information during execution and one post-mortem analysis. This permits tracing the execution of applications with low overhead while allowing to refine the analysis after the execution. We also present a script language for eztrace that gives the user the opportunity to easily define the functions to instrument without modifying the source code of the application.