A General Approach to the Monitoring of Distributed Memory MIMD Multicomputers
M. G. van Riek, Bernard Tourancheau, Xavier Vigouroux · 1993
Programs for distributed memory parallel machines are generally considered to be much more complex than sequential programs. Monitoring systems that collect runtime information about a program execution often prove a valuable help in gaining insight in the behavior of a parallel program and thus can increase its performance. This report describes in a systematic and comprehensive way the issues involved in the monitoring of parallel programs for distributed memory systems. It aims to provide a structured general approach to the field of monitoring and a guide for further documentation. First the different approaches to parallel monitoring are presented and the problems encountered are discussed and classified. In the second part, the main existing systems are described to provide the user with a feeling for the possibilities and limitations of real tools.