Monitoring shared virtual memory performance on a Myrinet-based PC cluster

Abstract

Network-connected clusters of PCs or workstations are becoming a widespread parallel computing platform. Performance methodologies that use either simulation or high-level software instrumentation cannot adequately measure the detailed behavior of such systems. The availability of new network technologies based on programmable network interfaces opens a new avenue of research in analyzing and improving the performance of software shared memory protocols. We have developed monitoring firmware embedded in the programmable network interfaces of a Myrinet-based PC cluster. Timestamps on network packets facilitate the collection of low-level statistics on, e.g., network latencies, interrupt handler times and inter-node synchronization. This paper describes our use of the low-level software performance monitor to measure and understand the performance of a Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) system implemented on a Myrinetbased cluster, running the SPLASH-2 benchmarks. We measured time spent in vari...