Effectiveness of Trace Sampling for Performance Debugging Tools

Recently there has been a surge of interest in developing performance debugging tools to help programmers tune their applications for better memory performance [2, 4, 10]. These tools vary both in the detail of feedback provided to the user, and in the runtime overhead of using them. MemSpy [10] is a simulation-based tool which gives programmers detailed statistics on the memory system behavior of applications. It provides information on the frequency and causes of cache misses, and presents it in terms of source-level data and code objects with which the programmer is familiar. However, using MemSpy increases a program’s execution time by roughly 10 to 40 fold. This overhead is generally acceptable for applications with execution times of several minutes or less, but it can be inconvenient when tuning applications with very long execution times. This paper examines the use of trace sampling techniques to reduce the execution time overhead of tools like MemSpy. When simulating one t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1993
• Where: SIGMETRICS
• Authors: Margaret Martonosi, Anoop Gupta, Thomas E. Anderson
• Keywords: Execution Time, Execution Time Overheads, Hardware, Performance Debugging Tools, SIGMETRICS 1993