SIP: Performance Tuning through Source Code Interdependence

Abstract

The gap between CPU peak performance and achieved application performance widens as CPU complexity, as well as the gap between CPU cycle time and DRAM access time, increases. While advanced compilers can perform many optimizations to better utilize the cache system, the application programmer is still required to do some of the optimizations needed for efficient execution. Therefore, profiling should be performed on optimized binary code and performance problems reported to the programmer in an intuitive way. Existing performance tools do not have adequate functionality to address these needs. Here we introduce source interdependence profiling, SIP, as a paradigm to collect and present performance data to the programmer. SIP identifies the performance problems that remain after the compiler optimization and gives intuitive hints at the source-code level as to how they can be avoided. Instead of just collecting information about the events directly caused by each source-code statement, SIP also presents data about events from some interdependent statements of source code. A first SIP prototype tool has been implemented. It supports both C and Fortran programs. We describe how the tool was used to improve the performance of the SPEC CPU2000 183.equake application by 59 percent.

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BibTeX file entry: Berg:2002:aug