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Wesley Shimanek
1

The need to write scalable applications has been important for programmers in the HPC community for years. Now, with the proliferation of multi/many-core processors developing scalable software is now a top priority for many programmers. 

Andrew S. Tanenbaum stated at the USENIX ’08 conference last year that developing “sequential programming is really hard” … the difficulty is “parallel programming is a step beyond that.” 

He is right, but let’s illustrate why it is just a small step.

Here is the point – parallel architectures will continue proliferating and we will need to develop and refine parallel algorithms that exploit parallelism. While difficult, to develop and refine parallel algorithms, the actual programming of these new algorithms, does not need to be hard.  However, if the developer is required to know the intimate details of the hardware then the development and refinement parallel algorithms can be very difficult, and very time consuming.

One approach provided by Intel software developer tools is to abstract away the details of the hardware.  This allows the developer to focus on their algorithms /applications, and rely on Intel software developer tools to provide the best optimizations for current and future platform While you may give up some performance by being abstracted away, what you lose in performance will be rewarded by your ability to quickly iterate through more iteration of your parallelization ideas in less time.  You may find yourself designing and developing better approaches to parallelism because you were able to test more hypotheses. 

An additional by-product of being abstracted away from having to know the intricacies of the hardware is that your software will be highly adaptable to future platforms.  You will see tremendous improvements on multi-core solutions and will be in a great position scale your application performance forward as newer architectures are made available. 

To learn more Intel Software Tools and the benefits of optimizing your software on multi core based solutions first visit http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-sdp-home/

1 Comments Permalink Tags: performance_tuning, software_tools, optimization, performance, tuning, performance_leadership, performance_benchmark, benchmark
Shannon Cepeda
1

 

As a follow-up to my first post on the 10 Habits of Great Server Performance Tuners, this post focuses on the first habit: Ask the Right Question.

 

 

6 years of performance work have taught me to start all my projects with this habit. Before I explain the kinds of questions I ask, let me demonstrate why this is important. Here are some example undesirable outcomes of performance tuning:

 

 

 

  • You spend months of experimentation trying to match a level of performance you saw reported in a case study on the internet, only to find out later that it used un-released software you can't get yet.

  • You spend months optimizing your server for raw performance. As part of your optimization you fully load it with the best available memory and adapters. Then you find out that your management/users would have been happier with a lower level of performance but a less costly system.

  • Your team works hard to maximize the performance of your application server for the current number of users you have, but makes decisions that will result in bottlenecks and re-designs when the number of users increases.

 

The outcome we are all hoping for with our tuning projects is that we provide the best level of performance possible within the budgetary, time, and TCO constraints we have. And of course, without sacrificing any other critical needs we'll have for our server, either now or in the future. Since performance optimization can take a lot of time and resources, consider the following questions before embarking on a project:

 

  • Why are you tuning your platform? (This helps you decide the amount of resources to dedicate.)

    • As part of this question, consider this one: How will the needs and usage models for this server change over the course of its life?

  • What level of performance are you hoping to achieve?

  • Are your expectations appropriate for the software and server system you are using?

    • In determining if your expectations are appropriate, refer to benchmarking results or case studies where appropriate and make sure any comparisons you make are apples to apples!

    • A corollary to this question is: is the server being used appropriate for the application being run?

  • What qualities of your platform are you trying to optimize: raw performance, cost/performance, energy efficiency (performance/watt), or something else?

  • Is performance your top priority for the system, or is scalability, extendibility, or something else a higher goal?

 

Thinking about the answers to these questions can help you navigate the trade-offs and tough decisions that are sure to pop up, and will help make your tuning project successful.

 

Keep watching The Server Room for information on the other 9 habits in the coming weeks.

1 Comments 2 References Permalink Tags: shannon_cepeda, cepeda, performance, benchmark, server, tuning

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