MTF: A Scalable Exchange Format for Traces of High Performance Computing Systems

Execution traces generated from running high performance computing applications (HPC) may reach tens or hundreds of gigabytes. The trace data can be used for visualization, analysis of profiling information about the target system. However, in order to make the utilization of this data efficient, the trace needs to be represented in a structure that facilitates the access to its data. One important factor that should be considered when representing trace data is scalability; the trace met model should be able to represent the trace in a compact form that enables scalability of the analysis tools. Additionally, a trace file needs to be available in a format that is well-known in the software engineering area by making it open. In this paper, we propose a metamodel for representing dynamic information generated from HPC that use the MPI standard as the inter-process communication model. MPI Trace Format (MTF) is meant to meet the aforementioned requirements and is intended to facilitate the interoperability among different trace analysis tools.