P^NMPI tools: A whole lot greater than the sum of their parts

PⁿMPI extends the PMPI profiling interface to support multiple concurrent PMPI-based tools by enabling users to assemble tool stacks. We extend this basic concept to include new services for tool interoperability and to switch between tool stacks dynamically. This allows PⁿMPI to support modules that virtualize MPI execution environments within an MPI job or that restrict the application of existing, unmodified tools to a dynamic subset of MPI calls or even call sites. Further, we extend PⁿMPI to platforms without dynamic linking, such as BlueGene/L, and we introduce an extended performance model along with experimental data from microbenchmarks to show that the performance overhead on any platform is negligible. More importantly, we provide significant new MPI tool components that are sufficient to compose interesting MPI tools. We present three detailed PⁿMPI usage scenarios that demonstrate that it significantly simplifies the creation of application-specific tools. (c) 2007 ACM.