Hardware Performance on NCSA Linux Clusters Without the Hassle

by Rick Kufrin, NCSA PerfSuite project lead

Four utilities now available on the NCSA Platinum and Titan clusters make it easy for you to measure hardware performance data without modifying your application. All of these utilities are located in the directory /usr/apps/tools/bin on the appropriate cluster.

Platinum (IA-32) utilities are "perfex" and "hpmcount," written by Mikael Pettersson of Uppsala University in Sweden, and by Luiz Derose of IBM's Advanced Computing Technology Center, respectively.

Itanium (IA-64) utilities are "pfmon" and "ps_run," developed by Stephane Eranian of Hewlett-Packard Company and by NCSA's PerfSuite project, respectively.

Each of these utilities allows you to measure hardware performance events on unmodified executables (no source code changes or recompilation required), giving you a quick and accurate way of gaining insight into the overall performance of your application.

If you're interested in using any of these utilities, you can get additional information by contacting NCSA Consulting Services by email at consult@ncsa.uiuc.edu or by phone at 217-244-1144. Staff are available Monday through Friday between 8:30 am and 5:00 pm (Central Time).