Parallel performance wizard: A performance analysis tool for partitioned global-address-space programming

Given the complexity of parallel programs, developers often must rely on performance analysis tools to help them improve the performance of their code. While many tools support the analysis of message-passing programs, no tool exists that fully supports programs written in programming models that present a partitioned global address space (PGAS) to the programmer, such as UPC and SHMEM. Existing tools with support for message-passing models cannot be easily extended to support PGAS programming models, due to the differences between these paradigms. Furthermore, the inclusion of implicit and one-sided communication in PGAS models renders many of the analyses performed by existing tools irrelevant. For these reasons, there exists a need for a new performance tool capable of handling the challenges associated with PGAS models. In this paper, we first present background research and the framework for Parallel Performance Wizard (PPW), a modularized, event-based performance analysis tool for PGAS programming models. We then discuss features of PPW and how they are used in the analysis of PGAS applications. Finally, we illustrate how one would use PPW in the analysis and optimization of PGAS applications by presenting a small case study using the PPW version 1.0 implementation.