System support for dynamic optimization of application performance

Today's high performance and parallel computer systems provide substantial opportunities for concurrency of execution and scalability that is largely untapped by the applications that run on them. Under traditional frameworks, developing efficient applications can be a labor-intensive process that requires an intimate knowledge of the machines, the applications, and many subtle machine-application interactions. Optimizing applications so that they can achieve their full potential on target machines is often beyond the programmer's or the compiler's ability or endurance. This paper argues for addressing the performance optimization problem by providing support for tuning application codes with substantially reduced human intervention by exploiting dynamic information gathered at run time so that the optimization is responsive to actual run time behavior as data sets change and installed systems evolve.