Allinea Forge combines both the DDT debugging tool with the MAP performance enhancing software package in one suite.
Allinea MAP joins DDT in user toolkit
Users at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) have new tools in their arsenal for enhancing performance, with the deployment of the Allinea Forge package. These tools are being demonstrated for users at two events this spring.
Forge, a combination of the Allinea DDT and MAP software tools, will continue to provide users at the OLCF, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with the debugging capability of DDT while adding the MAP software. MAP provides in-depth analysis and bottleneck pinpointing and works as a profiler for both OpenMP and MPI.
The OLCF sees MAP as a performance tool to help users with the transition from Titan to Summit because it is available on both platforms. The deployment is a result of collaboration and discussion at the OLCF among team members and vendor partners.
“MAP is user-friendly and allows even users who may not have extensive experience with performance analysis to easily and quickly begin to understand and improve their codes,” said David Bernholdt, group leader for the Computer Science Research Group. “The ability to offer a common set of tools on Titan, the new development platforms for Summit, and Summit itself will also be a major benefit to users.”
MAP joins the Allinea DDT tool—an advanced debugging tool used for scalar, multi-threaded, and large-scale parallel applications. In addition to traditional debugging features (i.e., setting breakpoints, stepping through code, examining variables), DDT also allows users to easily control and examine data from hundreds of thousands of processing elements simultaneously.
Allinea application consultant Nick Forrington’s presence on site at ORNL helps users with the adoption of the package. “The users won’t need a great deal of expertise to get started, but I can get more detail for them if it is needed,” he said.
Added Forrington, “With the deployment of a tool like MAP, we’re attempting to reduce the barrier to entry for performance analysis.”
Another component of the package is Performance Reports, which uses the same technology as MAP. Forrington noted that this component gives users a snapshot of the performance characteristics of their code in a one-page printout, along with suggestions on where to focus efforts to increase performance.
To deploy the tools, Bernholdt and his team members—Mike Brim and Swen Boehm—worked with members of the Scientific Computing (SciComp) group to ensure the tool met their needs and expectations. Further, Forrington worked with SciComp to identify users to employ MAP on a trial basis.
The next step in the implementation process was Forrington’s presentation on MAP and Performance Reports during last week’s users conference call. Then, in May, Forrington will give a more in-depth demonstration of both DDT and MAP at the annual User Meeting.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is supported by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
