Seminars & Events

Paul Roesn Seminar
"Visual Exploration of Software Memory Behavior"

DATE: May 29, 2012 to May 29, 2012
TIME: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
SPEAKER: Paul Rosen, Assistant Professor at SCI at the University of Utah
LOCATION: Building 240 Conference Room 6178, Argonne National Laboratory
HOST: Aaron Knoll, MCS

Description:
Computer software exhibits complex interactions with underlying hardware, making understanding performance difficult. Using a memory reference trace, a list of memory transactions performed by software at runtime, enables deep exploration into the structure of software execution. In my talk I will overview 3 systems. First, Waxlamp uses abstract visual encodings, animating the event streams so that the user can directly observe what happened at runtime. Next, a topologically-based approach is developed that finds and visualizes cyclical patterns in the normally linear reference trace as spiral structures expanding out into the time dimension. Finally, an ensemble-based method visualizes side-by-side several reference traces, or a single trace simulated through different cache configurations, bundled into a 'cache simulation ensemble'. Several case studies illustrate the approach.

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