Application-Dependent Dynamic Monitoring of Distributed and Parallel Systems

Achieving high performance for parallel or distributed programs often requires substantial amounts of information about the programs themselves, about the systems on which they are executing, and about specific program runs. The monitoring system presented in this paper collects, analyzes, and makes application-dependent monitoring information available to the programmer and to the executing program. The system may be used for off-line program analysis, for on-line debugging, and for making on-line, dynamic changes to parallel or distributed programs to enhance their performance. We employ a highlevel, uniform data model for the representation of program information and monitoring data. We show how this model may be used for the specification of program views and attributes for monitoring, and we demonstrate how such specifications can be translated into efficient, program-specific monitoring code that uses alternative mechanisms for the distributed analysis and collection to be performed for the specified views. The model’s utility has been demonstrated on a wide variety of parallel machines, including several kinds of multiprocessors and a local area network.