Improving performance via mini-applications.

Crozier, Paul Stewart ; Thornquist, Heidi K. ; Numrich, Robert W. (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN) ; Williams, Alan B. ; Edwards, Harold Carter ; Keiter, Eric Richard ; Rajan, Mahesh ; Willenbring, James M. ; Doerfler, Douglas W. ; Heroux, Michael Allen

Sandia National Laboratories

关键词: 97 Mathematical Methods And Computing;    Implementation;    Computer Calculations;    Algorithms;    Computer Codes;   

DOI  :  10.2172/993908
RP-ID  :  SAND2009-5574
RP-ID  :  AC04-94AL85000
RP-ID  :  993908

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

Application performance is determined by a combination of many choices: hardware platform, runtime environment, languages and compilers used, algorithm choice and implementation, and more. In this complicated environment, we find that the use of mini-applications - small self-contained proxies for real applications - is an excellent approach for rapidly exploring the parameter space of all these choices. Furthermore, use of mini-applications enriches the interaction between application, library and computer system developers by providing explicit functioning software and concrete performance results that lead to detailed, focused discussions of design trade-offs, algorithm choices and runtime performance issues. In this paper we discuss a collection of mini-applications and demonstrate how we use them to analyze and improve application performance on new and future computer platforms.