The Case for a Common Instrumentation Interface for HPC Codes

Lightweight timekeeping functionality for basic performance logging, regression testing, and anomaly detection is essential in HPC codes. We present the Caliper, TiMemory, and PerfStubs libraries that have recently been developed as common solutions for these tasks. Lightweight, always-on profiling solutions are typically built around user-defined instrumentation points, which can benefit a variety of use cases beyond application timekeeping. We argue for the creation of a tool-agnostic adapter layer to make these instrumentation points available to third-party tools, runtime systems, and system software.