In Search of a Standards-Based Approach to Hybrid Performance Monitoring

A new multicomputer performance monitoring system is described in this paper. Where possible, the system employs portable performance monitoring instrumentation technology and leverages previous work. Trace event acquisition is hardware assisted and based on the MultiKron, a single--chip measurement solution developed at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. The user interface is based on the Pablo Performance Analysis Environment, a visualization and sonification toolkit developed at the University of Illinois. The SPIscope is introduced as a component that bridges the gap between these emerging standard interfaces. The SPIscope provides a high--bandwidth path to a large secondary storage for recording performance data. Connectivity to the user's performance analysis workstation is via a TCP/IP LAN. Facilities are provided to support application--specific trace events, breakpoint--style debugging, on--line transmission of selected data, and dynamic acquisition--rate con..