Profiling
Overview
Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 10 minQuestions
Basic profiling to identify the most computationally expensive parts of the code
Objectives
Profile the code with the use of GNU gprof tool
Identify the candidates for GPU optimisation
Profiling
Where to start?
This episode starts in 2_profiling/ directory.
In this section we will use the GNU Gprof performance analysis tool to profile our Laplace code.
First, the code needs to be compiled with -pg and -g options. This will enable the generation of line-by-line profiling information for gprof.
bash-4.2$ make -f makefile.gprof
gcc -pg -g -c -o laplace.o laplace.c
gcc -pg -g -o laplace laplace.o
Next, we will execute the Laplace code as usual.
bash-4.2$ srun -n 1 -u ./laplace 4000
Iteration 100, dt 0.457795
Iteration 200, dt 0.228820
Iteration 300, dt 0.152270
Iteration 400, dt 0.113999
Iteration 500, dt 0.091070
Iteration 600, dt 0.075823
Iteration 700, dt 0.064934
Iteration 800, dt 0.056746
Iteration 900, dt 0.050404
Iteration 1000, dt 0.045315
Iteration 1100, dt 0.041167
Iteration 1200, dt 0.037703
Iteration 1300, dt 0.034773
Iteration 1400, dt 0.032264
Iteration 1500, dt 0.030094
Iteration 1600, dt 0.028195
Iteration 1700, dt 0.026518
Iteration 1800, dt 0.025028
Iteration 1900, dt 0.023695
Iteration 2000, dt 0.022496
Iteration 2100, dt 0.021412
Iteration 2200, dt 0.020426
Total time was 84.610613 seconds.
After completing the task, the gmon.out file containing profiling information will be generated in the working directory.
Now, we can use the gprof profiler to generate the profiling report.
bash-4.2$ gprof -lbp laplace gmon.out
The set of options used above (-lbp) will generate only line by line profiling information with no call graph analysis.
Flat profile:
Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds.
% cumulative self self total
time seconds seconds calls Ts/call Ts/call name
23.77 15.27 15.27 main (laplace.c:55 @ 40089e)
18.85 27.38 12.11 main (laplace.c:46 @ 4007a1)
14.79 36.88 9.50 main (laplace.c:56 @ 400949)
13.84 45.76 8.89 main (laplace.c:46 @ 400831)
10.55 52.54 6.77 main (laplace.c:47 @ 4007e7)
8.21 57.81 5.28 main (laplace.c:47 @ 40080c)
5.22 61.16 3.35 main (laplace.c:45 @ 40085b)
2.78 62.95 1.79 main (laplace.c:54 @ 400985)
2.14 64.33 1.37 main (laplace.c:54 @ 400892)
0.16 64.43 0.10 main (laplace.c:46 @ 400808)
0.14 64.52 0.09 main (laplace.c:45 @ 400795)
0.03 64.54 0.02 init (laplace.c:83 @ 400ab1)
0.02 64.55 0.01 main (laplace.c:44 @ 40086c)
0.00 64.55 0.00 1 0.00 0.00 init (laplace.c:77 @ 400a92)
As can be seen, the majority of time is spent, as expected, in two parts of the code:
- the main computational kernel
for(i = 1; i <= GRIDX; i++) for(j = 1; j <= GRIDY; j++) T_new[i][j] = 0.25 * (T[i+1][j] + T[i-1][j] + T[i][j+1] + T[i][j-1]); - the loops computing the largest change in the temperature
for(i = 1; i <= GRIDX; i++){ for(j = 1; j <= GRIDY; j++){ dt = MAX( fabs(T_new[i][j]-T[i][j]), dt); T[i][j] = T_new[i][j]; } }
Those two loop nests are the candidates for directive-based GPU optimisation.
Key Points
We have analysed the performance of the Laplace code with the use of GNU Gprof profiler
We have identified the most computationally expensive parts of the code - two loop nests executed in each iteration of the solver