A community databank for performance tracefiles

Abstract

Tracefiles provide a convenient record of the behavior of HPC programs, but are not generally archived because of their storage requirements. This has hindered the developers of performance analysis tools, who must create their own tracefile collections in order to test tool functionality and usability. This paper describes a shared databank where members of the HPC community can deposit tracefiles for use in studying the performance characteristics of HPC platforms as well as in tool development activities. We describe how the Tracefile Testbed was designed and implemented to facilitate flexible searching and retrieval of tracefiles. A Web-based interface provides a convenient mechanism for browsing and downloading collections of tracefiles and tracefile segments based on a variety of characteristics. The paper discusses the key implementation challenges.