In this video, Thomas Wilhelm shows software developers how they can optimize their application in order to identify if they can benefit from Persistent memory.
Persistent memory is adding a completely novel memory tier to the memory hierarchy that fits between DRAM and SSDs. In this video, we will show software developers how they can analyze their application in order to identify if they will benefit from persistent memory.
Intel VTune Amplifier – Platform Profiler is a tool that helps users to identify how well an application uses the underlying architecture and how users can optimize hardware configuration of their system. It displays high-level system configuration such as processor, memory, storage layout, PCIe* and network interfaces (see Figure 1), as well as performance metrics observed on the system such as CPU and memory utilization, CPU frequency, cycles per instruction (CPI), memory and disk input/output (I/O) throughput, power consumption, cache miss rate per instruction, and so on. Performance metrics collected by the tool can be used for deeper analysis and optimization.
The main difference between Platform Profiler and other VTune Amplifier analyses is that Platform Profiler helps profile a platform for longer periods of time incurring very little performance overhead and generating a small amount of data. The current version of Platform Profiler can run up to 13 hours and generate less data than VTune Amplifier would do in 13 hours. So, one can simply start Platform Profiler running, and keep it running for 13 hours, meanwhile utilizing the system as he or she prefers, then stopping Platform Profiler profiling. Platform Profiler will collect all the profiled data and display the system utilization diagrams. VTune Amplifier, on the other hand, cannot run for such a long period of time, since it generates profiled data of gigabytes of magnitude in a matter of minutes. Thus, VTune Amplifier is more appropriate for fine tuning or for analyzing an application rather than a system. How well is my application using the machine or perhaps How well is the machine being used are key questions that Platform Profiler can answer.
But, How do I fix my application to use the machine better is the question that VTune Amplifier answers.
