Interpretive performance prediction for High Performance application development

Software development for high Performance (parallel/distributed) Computing (HPC) is a non-trivial process; its complexity can be primarily attributed to the increased degrees of freedom that have to be resolved and tuned in such an environment. Performance prediction tools enable a developer to evaluate various available design alternatives and can assist in HPC application software development. In this paper we first present a novel `interpretive' approach for accurate and cost-effective performance prediction. The approach has been used to develop an interpretive HPF/Fortran 90D application performance prediction framework. The accuracy and usability of the performance prediction framework are experimentally validated. We then outline the stages typically encountered during application software development for parallel/distributed HPC and highlight the significance and requirements of a performance prediction tool at the relevant stages. Numerical results using benchmarking kernels and application codes are presented to demonstrate the application of the interpretive performance prediction framework at different stages of the software development process.