Online Displays of Parallel Programs: Problems and Solutions

The continuous display of information derived from on-line monitoring presents problems that are more difficult to resolve than those associated with off-line displays. Handling these problems requires a systematic approach affecting both the displays and the monitoring system itself. This paper discusses the problems inherent in on-line display and the approach to them taken by the Falcon monitoring system. Keywords: online displays, parallel programs 1 Introduction In order to support monitoring and interactive steering of computer programs during execution, program users need accurate and easy-tounderstand program information. Graphical displays have been shown useful in presenting data structures, algorithms, runtime program behavior, and performance information to human users. Most of the research on graphical displays has focused on the offline presentation of information, however. For users to interactively steer running programs, mechanisms are needed to handle the continuous..