Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: Eric.Maillet@imag.fr (Eric Maillet )
Subject: Announcing Tape/Pvm, performance monitor
Organization: Institut Imag, Grenoble, France
Date: 20 Mar 1995 14:11:56 GMT

   TAPE/PVM, AN EFFICIENT PERFORMANCE MONITOR FOR PVM APPLICATIONS

   Grenoble University                  available by anonymous ftp
   LMC-IMAG                                    from 'imag.imag.fr'
   46, av Felix Viallet                       in 'pub/APACHE/TAPE'
   38031 Grenoble, France
   

   Tape/Pvm is a tool to generate traces on PVM3.3 applications (C or
   FORTRAN) for post-mortem performance analysis. It comprises the
   tool to generate the traces, as well as a utility to transform the 
   traces into the PICL format for subsequent analysis with Paragraph.
   It also contains a library of C functions which allows programmers
   to easily read the generated traces.

   Our main goal in designing Tape/Pvm is to guarantee the 
   *representative quality* of the generated traces. We particularly
   focus on the following 2 points:

   1) Precise, causally coherent event dating

      Use of a statistical method to estimate a precise global time
      reference. Thus, we achieve *a priori* tachyon prevention 
      rather than post-mortem tachyon removal ( a tachyon is a dating
      incoherency like "message received before sent").

   2) Minimization of application intrusion

      A tracing tool inevitably perturbs the analyzed applications. We
      use local event buffers, flushed to local event files to store
      events. Usage of network bandwidth for tracing purposes is reduced
      to a minimum.

   Tape/Pvm has been tested on numerical applications written by
   colleagues at LMC-IMAG. It has become rather stable by now. Due to
   recent discussions and questions about measuring performance of PVM
   applications in 'comp.parallel.pvm', we decided to make Tape/Pvm
   publically available. You can get it by anonymous ftp from
   'imag.imag.fr' in 'pub/APACHE/TAPE'. You will also find a
   postscript user manual in the same location.

   If you try it out, please let us know about your comments and
   suggestions (mail to 'Eric.Maillet@imag.fr').

   Regards,

   E.M., LMC-IMAG
   Grenoble


