Complex Performance Measurements with NICE (Notation for Interval Combinations and Events)

: This paper presents a notation for extracting complex performance measurements of parallel software from an event log. NICE defines a "complex interval" as a sequence of events in the event log which match a rather general template using an Interval Monitor Process (IMP). The IMP process model combines an extended FSM with parameterized event descriptors to provide a generalized description of a sequence of subintervals each one of which may be measured for duration An interval matching algorithm provides a strategy for distributing the events in the log to multiple concurrent IMPS, thereby handling interval occurrences which overlap and/or share the same event. Practical issues of implementing and using NICE are addressed in a discussion of our performance monitoring tool called Finale. Keywords : Event monitoring distributed systems, performance measurements INTRODUCTION While investigating the performance of experimental applications on multiple processors, we have found it usefu..