Performance Modeling of HPC Applications

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the performance modeling of high performance computing (HPC) applications. Performance models of applications enable HPC system designers and centers to gain insight into the most optimal hardware for their applications, giving them valuable information into the components of hardware that for a certain investment of time/money will give the most benefit for the applications slated to run on the new system. The task of developing accurate performance models for scientific application on such complex systems can be difficult. The chapter briefly review a framework developed that provides an automated means for carrying out performance modeling investigations. The ongoing work to lower the overhead required for obtaining application signatures is discussed, and how one can increased the level-of-detail of convolutions with resulting improvements in modeling accuracy is explained. The chapter discusses how these technology advances enabled performance studies to explain why performance of applications, such as POP (Parallel Ocean Program), NLOM (Navy Layered Ocean Model), and Cobalt60, vary on different machines and quantifies the performance effect of various components of the machines. The chapter concludes by generalizing these results to show how this application's performance would likely improve if the underlying target machines were improved in various dimensions.