Stacked-widget visualization of scheduling-based algorithms
Tony Bernardin, Brian Budge, Bernd Hamann · 2008
We present a visualization system to assist designers of schedulingbased multi-threaded out-of-core algorithms. Our system facilitates the understanding and improving of the algorithm through a stack of visual widgets that effectively correlate the out-of-core system state with scheduling decisions. The stack presents an increasing refinement in the scope of both time and abstraction level; at the top of the stack, the evolution of a derived efficiency measure is shown for the scope of the entire out-of-core system execution and at the bottom the details of a single scheduling decision are displayed. The stack provides much more than a temporal zoom-effect as each widget presents a different view of the scheduling decision data, presenting distinct aspects of the out-of-core system state as well as correlating them with the neighboring widgets in the stack. This approach allows designers to to better understand and more effectively react to problems in scheduling or algorithm design. As a case study we consider a global illumination renderer and show how visualization of the scheduling behavior has led to key improvements of the renderer’s performance.