TVIEW - a graphical representation of programs running on the transputer

The primary motivation behind building multiprocessors is to cost-effectively improve system performance. Debugging and performance analysis of parallel programs, however, are complex tasks and the lack of tools to observe the behaviour of a program running on a multicomputer network, limits the programmers ability to efficiently debug and optimize parallel programs. In this thesis we investigate the use of different graphical representations of parallel programs running on a network of transputers as a tool for performance analysis. Postmortem traces collected from the program execution by the underlying monitor enables us to graphically reconstruct the states of the system that were true at run time. We show how the performance analyst can get an accurate view of the behaviour of the parallel program during execution by using a basic set of visualization tools. The challenge is to determine the types of graphical displays that are most useful for presenting the behaviour and performance of a parallel program. Problems in graphically visualization of parallel program executions are: efficiently managing of potentially large volumes of performance data, ensuring consistency among the tool-components, correctly responding to any combinations of user events, meeting the desirable system requirements of extensibility and maintainability.Science, Faculty ofComputer Science, Department ofGraduat