Parallel Application Signature for Performance Analysis and Prediction

Abstract

Predicting the performance of parallel scientific applications is becoming increasingly complex. Our goal was to characterize the behavior of message-passing applications on different target machines. To achieve this goal, we developed a method called parallel application signature for performance prediction (PAS2P), which strives to describe an application based on its behavior. Based on the application's message-passing activity, we identified and extracted representative phases, with which we created a parallel application signature that enabled us to predict the application's performance. We experimented with using different scientific applications on different clusters. We were able to predict execution times with an average accuracy greater than 97 percent.