Using dynamic tracing sampling to measure long running programs

Abstract

Detailed cache simulation can be useful to both system developers and application writers to understand an application's performance. However, measuring long running programs can be extremely slow. In this paper we present a technique to use dynamic sampling of trace snippets throughout an application's execution. We demonstrate that our approach improves accuracy compared to sampling a few timesteps at the beginning of execution by judiciously choosing the frequency, as well as the points in the control flow, at which samples are collected. Our approach is validated using the SIGMA tracing and simulation framework for the IBM Power family of processors.