Title:
Dominant Variance Characterization
Dominant Variance Characterization
Author(s)
Kumar, Tushar
Pande, Santosh
Pande, Santosh
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Abstract
There are a whole range of program analysis techniques that
characterize different aspects of an application’s performance:
hot-spots, distinct phases of behavior, code segments that could
potentially run in parallel, etc. For a growing class of applications,
there is a need to add another analysis technique to
the repertoire that can characterize the locations and underlying
causes of execution time variance in repetitive parts of the
application. In this paper we introduce the notion of dominant variance
analysis of an application. We illustrate the unique performance
optimization benefits of performing such an analysis. We motivate
that traditional program analysis and profiling techniques
are not sufficient to analyze the variant execution time behavior
of the application. We introduce a new program representation
called Variance Characterization Graph that is used both as
the intermediate representation to enable the dominant variance
analysis and as the final representation that provides concise and
actionable information to programmers. We identify the unique
challenges associated with characterizing the dominant behavior
of an application and develop a methodology based on statistical
pattern matching to efficiently recognize dominant patterns
of behavior.
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Date Issued
2010
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Text
Resource Subtype
Technical Report