(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-02-25)
Sottile, Matthew J.; Chandu, Vaddadi P.; Bader, David A.
The ability to understand the factors contributing to parallel program performance
are vital for understanding the impact of machine parameters on the performance of
specific applications. We propose a methodology for analyzing the performance characteristics
of parallel programs based on message-passing traces of their execution on a
set of processors. Using this methodology, we explore how perturbations in both single
processor performance and the messaging layer impact the performance of the traced
run. This analysis provides a quantitative description of the sensitivity of applications
to a variety of performance parameters to better understand the range of systems upon
which an application can be expected to perform well. These performance parameters
include operating system interference and variability in message latencies within the
interconnection network layer.