Multicore Software Engineering Performance And Tools

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Multiscore Software Engineering, Performance, and Tools, MSEPT 2012, held in Prague in May/June 2012. The 9 revised papers, 4 of which are short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 24 submissions. The papers address new work on optimization of multicore software, program analysis, and automatic parallelization. They also provide new perspectives on programming models as well as on applications of multicore systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Multiscore Software Engineering, Performance, and Tools, MUSEPAT 2013, held in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in August 2013. The 9 revised papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. The accepted papers are organized into three main sessions and cover topics such as software engineering for multicore systems; specification, modeling and design; programing models, languages, compiler techniques and development tools; verification, testing, analysis, debugging and performance tuning, security testing; software maintenance and evolution; multicore software issues in scientific computing, embedded and mobile systems; energy-efficient computing as well as experience reports.

The multicore revolution has reached the deployment stage in embedded systems ranging from small ultramobile devices to large telecommunication servers. The transition from single to multicore processors, motivated by the need to increase performance while conserving power, has placed great responsibility on the shoulders of software engineers. In this new embedded multicore era, the toughest task is the development of code to support more sophisticated systems. This book provides embedded engineers with solid grounding in the skills required to develop software targeting multicore processors. Within the text, the author undertakes an in-depth exploration of performance analysis, and a close-up look at the tools of the trade. Both general multicore design principles and processor-specific optimization techniques are revealed. Detailed coverage of critical issues for multicore employment within embedded systems is provided, including the Threading Development Cycle, with discussions of analysis, design, development, debugging, and performance tuning of threaded applications. Software development techniques engendering optimal mobility and energy efficiency are highlighted through multiple case studies, which provide practical “how-to advice on implementing the latest multicore processors. Finally, future trends are discussed, including terascale, speculative multithreading, transactional memory, interconnects, and the software-specific implications of these looming architectural developments. Table of Contents Chapter 1 - Introduction Chapter 2 – Basic System and Processor Architecture Chapter 3 – Multi-core Processors & Embedded Chapter 4 –Moving To Multi-core Intel Architecture Chapter 5 – Scalar Optimization & Usability Chapter 6 – Parallel Optimization Using Threads Chapter 7 - Case Study: Data Decomposition Chapter 8 - Case Study: Functional Decomposition Chapter 9 – Virtualization & Partitioning Chapter 10 – Getting Ready For Low Power Intel Architecture Chapter 11 - Summary, Trends, and Conclusions Appendix I Glossary References *This is the only book to explain software optimization for embedded multi-core systems *Helpful tips, tricks and design secrets from an Intel programming expert, with detailed examples using the popular X86 architecture *Covers hot topics, including ultramobile devices, low-power designs, Pthreads vs. OpenMP, and heterogeneous cores

With multicore processors now in every computer, server, and embedded device, the need for cost-effective, reliable parallel software has never been greater. By explaining key aspects of multicore programming, Fundamentals of Multicore Software Development helps software engineers understand parallel programming and master the multicore challenge.

The multicore revolution has reached the deployment stage in embedded systems ranging from small ultramobile devices to large telecommunication servers. The transition from single to multicore processors, motivated by the need to increase performance while conserving power, has placed great responsibility on the shoulders of software engineers. In this new embedded multicore era, the toughest task is the development of code to support more sophisticated systems. This book provides embedded engineers with solid grounding in the skills required to develop software targeting multicore processors. Within the text, the author undertakes an in-depth exploration of performance analysis, and a close-up look at the tools of the trade. Both general multicore design principles and processor-specific optimization techniques are revealed. Detailed coverage of critical issues for multicore employment within embedded systems is provided, including the Threading Development Cycle, with discussions of analysis, design, development, debugging, and performance tuning of threaded applications. Software development techniques engendering optimal mobility and energy efficiency are highlighted through multiple case studies, which provide practical 'how-to' advice on implementing the latest multicore processors. Finally, future trends are discussed, including terascale, speculative multithreading, transactional memory, interconnects, and the software-specific implications of these looming architectural developments. Table of Contents Chapter 1 - Introduction Chapter 2 - Basic System and Processor Architecture Chapter 3 - Multi-core Processors & Embedded Chapter 4 -Moving To Multi-core Intel Architecture Chapter 5 - Scalar Optimization & Usability Chapter 6 - Parallel Optimization Using Threads Chapter 7 - Case Study: Data Decomposition Chapter 8 - Case Study: Functional Decomposition Chapter 9 - Virtualization & Partitioning Chapter 10 - Getting Ready For Low Power Intel Architecture Chapter 11 - Summary, Trends, and Conclusions Appendix I Glossary References *This is the only book to explain software optimization for embedded multi-core systems *Helpful tips, tricks and design secrets from an Intel programming expert, with detailed examples using the popular X86 architecture *Covers hot topics, including ultramobile devices, low-power designs, Pthreads vs. OpenMP, and heterogeneous cores.

Efficient software development requires adequate toolsets to assist the developer in analyzing and optimizing a software application’s performance. With the relatively recent advent of multicore embedded hardware platforms, toolsets for supporting multicore development have appeared, although, in some cases, capabilities may be missing or immature, leaving software developers to manually massage outputs from one tool into inputs for the next tool or struggling to investigate unexpected multicore behaviors. This section reviews those multicore tools currently available for software developers as well as those that are still needed for adequate support.

This state-of-the-art survey features topics related to the impact of multicore and coprocessor technologies in science and for large-scale applications in an interdisciplinary environment. The papers cover all issues of current research in mathematical modeling, design of parallel algorithms, aspects of microprocessor architecture, parallel programming languages, compilers, hardware-aware computing, heterogeneous platforms, emerging architectures, tools, performance tuning, and requirements for large-scale applications. The contributions presented in this volume offer a survey on the state of the art, the concepts and perspectives for future developments. They are an outcome of an inspiring conference conceived and organized by the editors within the junior scientist program of Heidelberg Academy for Sciences and Humanities titled "Facing the Multicore-Challenge", held at Heidelberg, Germany, in March 2010. The 12 revised full papers presented together with the extended abstracts of 3 invited lectures focus on combination of new aspects of multicore microprocessor technologies, parallel applications, numerical simulation, software development, and tools; thus they clearly show the potential of emerging technologies in the area of multicore and manycore processors that are paving the way towards personal supercomputing.

Application-level monitoring of continuously operating software systems provides insights into their dynamic behavior, helping to maintain their performance and availability during runtime. Such monitoring may cause a significant runtime overhead to the monitored system, depending on the number and location of used instrumentation probes. In order to improve a system’s instrumentation and to reduce the caused monitoring overhead, it is necessary to know the performance impact of each probe. While many monitoring frameworks are claiming to have minimal impact on the performance, these claims are often not backed up with a detailed performance evaluation determining the actual cost of monitoring. Benchmarks can be used as an effective and affordable way for these evaluations. However, no benchmark specifically targeting the overhead of monitoring itself exists. Furthermore, no established benchmark engineering methodology exists that provides guidelines for the design, execution, and analysis of benchmarks. This thesis introduces a benchmark approach to measure the performance overhead of application-level monitoring frameworks. The core contributions of this approach are 1) a definition of common causes of monitoring overhead, 2) a general benchmark engineering methodology, 3) the MooBench micro-benchmark to measure and quantify causes of monitoring overhead, and 4) detailed performance evaluations of three different application-level monitoring frameworks. Extensive experiments demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of the approach and validate the benchmark results. The developed benchmark is available as open source software and the results of all experiments are available for download to facilitate further validation and replication of the results.