Open|SpeedShop Graphical User Interface Technology, Phase I

As an open source software project, Open|SpeedShop has been available to the high performance computing industry with its first release in 2004. The primary Non-NASA customers to benefit will the researchers at the Department of Energy (DOE) Laboratories. As described in the proposal the DOE and its laboratories have been research and development partners of Open|SpeedShop from the beginning. All science and engineering application codes run on high performance computing systems are potential beneficiaries of the work proposed under this SBIR. The Department of Defense is the next agency that will directly benefit from a more robust Open|SpeedShop open source software product. The HPC community will additionally benefit from another innovation that directly addresses issues seen with machines at the Department of Energy's leadership-class and university facilities that are being used remotely, nationally and internationally. The use of any parallel performance tool in a distributed way has typically been a challenging experience for the user. Current tools typically run on the target system, meaning the user must contend with high latencies in interactions with the tool's Graphical User Interface. Our remote Graphical User Interface (GUI) innovation approaches this problem by reducing the amount of data transferred over the network while allowing the user to interact with a more robust GUI. Open|SpeedShop has been available to researchers at NASA Ames beginning in 2007. Since then, Open|SpeedShop research project personnel have given on-site tutorials at NASA Ames and have worked closely with NASA researchers to help profile their applications. While working with NASA researcher Dr. Sharadchandr Gavali to profile the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation application, the Open|SpeedShop team received valuable user interface feedback which resulted in many of the innovations listed in this proposal. Notably, the ideas of performance analysis wizards that assist the user in interpreting gathered data and identifying changes to increase efficiencies; intuitive 3D views that allow the user to easily visualize large quantities of performance data; methods that enable the user to quickly determine the scalability of their application. Increasing the productive use of the Open|SpeedShop tool will empower NASA researchers to more efficiently utilize the computational resources that are available to them across the Agency. The innovations in this proposal will accomplish this for NASA application scientists and computer scientists. More »