Using the Pablo HDF Analysis Tools: A Tutorial

hdf1.gif (5814 bytes)Several programs exist to help analyze data recorded in SDDF performance trace files by the HDF extension to the Pablo Performance Analysis toolkit. Both the runtime and the real-time HDF tracing options, available through this extension, generate per-process performance files in the SDDF binary format.

Three programs have been created  for analyzing the HDF trace files: CreateHDFRecords, SyncHDFids, and HDFStatsTable. These three programs and a fourth, MergePabloTraces --- part of the SDDF component of the Pablo toolkit---are found in the Pablo-instrumented version of the HDF distribution. They are used to generate the performance reports.

Runtime Tracing

If  runtime tracing was used, analysts would complete the following steps:

  1. Run CreateHDFRecords on the SDDF trace file(s).
  2. If multiple SDDF trace files were produced, run MergePabloTraces to merge the data into one file. If multiple SDDF files were not produced, the file is already considered merged.
  3. Run SyncHDFids on the merged file to synchronize the HDF identifiers.
  4. Run HDFStatsTable on the output from SyncHDFids to produce a report

Real-time (Summary) Tracing

  1. If multiple SDDF trace files were produced, run MergePabloTraces to merge the data into one file. If multiple SDDF files were not produced, the file is already considered merged.
  2. Run SyncHDFids on the merged file to synchronize the HDF identifiers.
  3. Run HDFStatsTable on the output from SyncHDFids to produce a report

Download the Pablo HDF Library User Guide