4.1 (revision 13848)
Usage of scorep-score

scorep-score is a tool that allows to estimate the size of an OTF2 trace from a CUBE4 profile. Furthermore, the effects of filters are estimated. The main goal is to define appropriate filters for a tracing run from a profile.

The general work-flow for performance analysis with Score-P is:

  1. Instrument an application (see Section   'Application Instrumentation'   ).
  2. Perform a measurement run and record a profile (see Section   'Application Measurement'   ). The profile already gives an overview what may happen inside the application.
  3. Use scorep-score to define an appropriate filter for an application Otherwise the trace file may become too large. This step is explained in this Chapter.
  4. Perform a measurement run with tracing enabled and the filter applied (see Section   'Tracing'   and Section   'Filtering'   ).
  5. Perform in-depth analysis on the trace data.

Basic usage

To invoke scorep-score you must provide the filename of a CUBE4 profile as argument. Thus, the basic command looks like this:

scorep-score profile.cubex

The output of the command may look like this (taking an MPI/OpenMP hybrid application as an example):

Estimated aggregate size of event trace:                   20MB
Estimated requirements for largest trace buffer (max_buf): 20MB
Estimated memory requirements (SCOREP_TOTAL_MEMORY):       24MB
(hint: When tracing set SCOREP_TOTAL_MEMORY=24MB to avoid intermediate flushes
 or reduce requirements using USR regions filters.)

flt type      max_buf[B]        visits      time[s]  time[%]  time/visit[us]  region
     ALL      19,377,048       786,577        27.48    100.0           34.93  ALL
     USR      16,039,680       668,320         0.36      1.3            0.53  USR
     OMP       3,328,344       117,881        26.92     98.0          228.37  OMP
     COM           9,024           376         0.20      0.7          532.17  COM

The first line of the output gives an estimation of the total size of the trace, aggregated over all processes. This information is useful for estimating the space required on disk. In the given example, the estimated total size of the event trace is 20MB.

The second line prints an estimation of the memory space required by a single process for the trace. The memory space that Score-P reserves on each process at application start must be large enough to hold the process' trace in memory in order to avoid flushes during runtime, because flushes heavily disturb measurements. In addition to the trace, Score-P requires some additional memory to maintain internal data structures. Thus, it provides also an estimation for the total amount of required memory on each process. The memory size per process that Score-P reserves is set via the environment variable SCOREP_TOTAL_MEMORY. In the given example the per process memory should be larger than 24MB.

Beginning with the 6th line, scorep-score prints a table that show how the trace memory requirements and the runtime is distributed among certain function groups. The column max_tbc shows how much trace buffer is needed on a single process. The column time(s) shows how much execution time was spend in regions of that group in seconds, the column % shows the fraction of the overall runtime that was used by this group, and the column time/visit(us) shows the average time per visit in microseconds.

The following groups exist:

Additional per-region information

For a more detailed output, which shows the data for every region, you can use the -r option. The command could look like this.

scorep-score profile.cubex -r

This command adds information about the used buffer sizes and execution time of every region to the table. The additional lines of the output may look like this:

flt type      max_buf[B]        visits      time[s]  time[%]  time/visit[us]  region

     COM              24             4         0.00      0.0           67.78  Init
     COM              24             4         0.00      0.0           81.20  main
     USR              24             4         0.12      2.0        30931.14  InitializeMatrix
     COM              24             4         0.05      0.8        12604.78  CheckError
     USR              24             4         0.00      0.0           23.76  PrintResults
     COM              24             4         0.01      0.2         3441.83  Finish
     COM              24             4         0.48      7.7       120338.17  Jacobi

The region name is displayed in the column named region. The column type shows to which group this region belongs. In the example above the function main belongs to group COM required 24 bytes per process and used 0 s execution time. The regions are sorted by their buffer requirements.

By default scorep-score uses demangled function names. However, if you want to map data to tools which use mangled names you might want to display mangled names. Furthermore, if you have trouble with function signatures that contain characters that also have a wildcard meaning, defining filters on mangled names might be easier. To display mangled names instead of demangled names, you can use the -m flag, e.g.,

scorep-score profile.cubex -r -m
Note
The -m flag takes only effect if you display region names. In particular it means that the -m flag is only effective if also the -r is specified.
In some cases, the same name is shown for the mangled and the demangled name. Some instrumentation methods, e.g., user instrumentation, provide only a demangled name. For C-compilers mangled and demangled names are usually identical. Or the demangling might have failed and only a mangled name is available. In these cases we show always the one name that is available.

Defining and testing a filter

For defining a filter, it is recommended to exclude short frequently called functions from measurement, because they require a lot of buffer space (represented by a high value under max_tbc) but incur a high measurement overhead. Furthermore, for communication analysis, functions that appear on a call-path to MPI functions and OpenMP constructs (regions of type COM) are usually of more interest than user functions of type USR which do not appear on call-path to communications. MPI functions and OpenMP constructs cannot be filtered. Thus, it is usually a good approach to exclude regions of type USR starting at the top of the list until you reduced the trace to your needs. Section   'Filtering'   describes the format of a filter specification file.

If you have a filter file, you can test the effect of your filter on the trace file. Therefor, you need to pass a -f followed by the file name of your filter. E.g., if your filter file name is myfilter, the command looks like this:

scorep-score profile.cubex -f myfilter

An example output is:

Estimated aggregate size of event trace:                   7kB
Estimated requirements for largest trace buffer (max_buf): 1806 bytes
Estimated memory requirements (SCOREP_TOTAL_MEMORY):       5MB
(hint: When tracing set SCOREP_TOTAL_MEMORY=5MB to avoid intermediate flushes
 or reduce requirements using USR regions filters.)

flt type      max_buf[B]        visits      time[s]  time[%]  time/visit[us]  region
 -   ALL           2,093           172         5.17    100.0        30066.64  ALL
 -   MPI           1,805           124         4.20     81.3        33910.31  MPI
 -   COM             240            40         0.84     16.3        21092.44  COM
 -   USR              48             8         0.12      2.4        15360.71  USR

 *   ALL           1,805           124         4.20     81.3        33910.31  ALL-FLT
 -   MPI           1,805           124         4.20     81.3        33910.31  MPI-FLT
 +   FLT             288            48         0.97     18.7        20137.15  FLT

Now, the output estimates the total trace size an the required memory per process, if you would apply the provided filter for the measurement run which records the trace. A new group FLT appears, which contains all regions that are filtered. Under max_tbc the group FLT displays how the memory requirements per process are reduced. Furthermore, the groups that end on -FLT, like ALL-FLT contain only the unfiltered regions of the original group. E.g., USR-FLT contains all regions of group USR that are not filtered.

Furthermore, the column flt is no longer empty but contain a symbol that indicates how this group is affected by the filter. A '-' means 'not filtered', a '+' means 'filtered' and a '*' appears in front of groups that potentially can be affected by the filter.

You may combine the -f option with a -r option. In this case, for each function a '+' or '-' indicates whether the function is filtered.

Calculating the effects of recording hardware counters

Recording additional metrics, e.g., hardware counters may significantly increase the trace size, because for many events additional metric values are stored. In order to estimate the effects of these metrics, you may add a -c followed by the number of metrics you want to record, e.g.,

scorep-score profile.cubex -c 3

would mean that scorep-score estimates the disk and memory requirements for the case that you record 3 additional metrics.