A Callgraph-Based Search Strategy for Automated Performance Diagnosis (Distinguished Paper)

We introduce a new technique for automated performance diagnosis, using the program’s callgraph. We discuss our implementation of this diagnosis technique in the Paradyn Performance Consultant. Our implementation includes the new search strategy and new dynamic instrumentation to resolve pointer-based dynamic call sites at run-time. We compare the effectiveness of our new technique to the previous version of the Performance Consultant for several sequential and parallel applications. Our results show that the new search method performs its search while inserting dramatically less instrumentation into the application, resulting in reduced application perturbation and consequently a higher degree of diagnosis accuracy.