Compensation of Measurement Overhead in Parallel Performance Profiling

Abstract. Performance profiling generates measurement overhead during parallel program execution. Measurement overhead, in turn, introduces intrusion in a program’s runtime performance behavior. In-trusion can be mitigated by controlling instrumentation degree, allowing a tradeoff of accuracy for detail. Alternatively, the accuracy in profile results can be improved by reducing the intrusion error due to mea-surement overhead. Models for compensation of measurement overhead in parallel performance profiling are described. An approach based on rational reconstruction is used to understand properties of compensa-tion solutions for different parallel scenarios. From this analysis, a general algorithm for on-the-fly overhead assessment and compensation is derived