EZTrace: a generic framework for performance analysis

Abstract : Modern supercomputers with multi-core nodes enhanced by accelerators, as well as hybrid programming models, introduce more complexity in modern applications. Exploiting efficiently all the resources requires a complex analysis of the performance of applications in order to detect time-consuming or idle sections. We present eztrace, a generic trace generation framework that aims at providing a simple way to analyze applications. eztrace is based on plugins that allow it to trace different programming models such as MPI, pthread or OpenMP as well as user-defined libraries or applications. This framework uses two steps: one to collect the basic information during execution and one post-mortem analysis. This permits tracing the execution of applications with low overhead while allowing to refine the analysis after the execution of the program. We also present a simple script language for \eztrace that gives the user the opportunity to easily define the functions to instrument without modifying the source code of the application.