An On-Line Performance Introspection Framework for Task-Based Runtime Systems

The expected high levels of parallelism together with the heterogeneity and complexity of new computing systems pose many challenges to current software. New programming approaches and runtime systems that can simplify the development of parallel applications are needed. Task-based runtime systems have emerged as a good solution to cope with high levels of parallelism, while providing software portability, and easing program development. However, these runtime systems require real-time information on the state of the system to properly orchestrate program execution and optimise resource utilisation. In this paper, we present a lightweight monitoring infrastructure developed within the AllScale Runtime System, a task-based runtime system for extreme scale. This monitoring component provides real-time introspection capabilities that help the runtime scheduler in its decision-making process and adaptation, while introducing minimum overhead. In addition, the monitoring component provides several post-mortem reports as well as real-time data visualisation that can be of great help in the task of performance debugging.