Extending the Eclipse Parallel Tools Platform Debugger with Scalable Parallel Debugging Library

AbstractThe Eclipse Parallel Tools Platform (PTP) is an open source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) aiding the development of Supercomputer applications. The PTP parallel debugger is used by a growing community of developers in scientific and engineering fields. This paper proposes a method of improving the communication infrastructure of the PTP debugger by taking advantage of a Scalable Parallel Debugging Library (SPDL). Unlike the present communication framework of PTP, the Scalable Debug Manager (SDM), SPDL provides a pluggable architecture that allows developers to select a communication protocol suitable for a targeted supercomputer. It currently supports a number of scalable protocols, including MRNet and SCI. The advanced features provided by these communication trees, like programmable filters and configurable topologies, allow developers to create more flexible solutions of efficient reduction and aggregation operations for parallel debugging. In particular, they allow parallel debuggers to handle the large amounts of back-end messages in peta-scale environments with better efficiency. The architecture of the PTP debugger is extended to support SPDL. The extended architecture combines the advantages of the PTP debugger at the front-end and SPDL at the back-end. It improves the scalability and performance of the PTP debugger. Consequently, it provides a flexible option of utilizing the PTP debugger with pluggable communication protocols to address the debugging challenges in peta-scale environments