Performance modeling for systematic performance tuning

Abstract

The performance of parallel scientific applications depends on many factors which are determined by the execution environment and the parallel application. Especially on large parallel systems, it is too expensive to explore the solution space with series of experiments. Deriving analytical models for applications and platforms allow estimating and extrapolating their execution performance, bottlenecks, and the potential impact of optimization options. We propose to use such "performance modeling" techniques beginning from the application design process throughout the whole software development cycle and also during the lifetime of supercomputer systems. Such models help to guide supercomputer system design and re-engineering efforts to adopt applications to changing platforms and allow users to estimate costs to solve a particular problem. Models can often be built with the help of well-known performance profiling tools. We discuss how we successfully used modeling throughout the proposal, initial testing, and beginning deployment phase of the Blue Waters supercomputer system.