Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE and Intel® VTune™ Amplifier for Systems Help

Interpreting HPC Performance Characterization Data

Use the HPC Performance Characterization viewpoint to estimate CPU usage, memory efficiency, and floating-point utilization for compute-intensive or throughput applications. Compute-intensive or throughput applications should use hardware resources efficiently for the duration of their elapsed time. Use the HPC Performance Characterization analysis as a starting point for optimizing application performance and runtime.

To interpret the performance data provided in the HPC Performance Characterization viewpoint, you may follow the steps below:

  1. Define a Performance Baseline

  2. Determine Optimization Opportunities

  3. Analyze Source

  4. Explore Other Analysis Types

Tip

Use the Analyzing an OpenMP* and MPI Application tutorial to review basic steps for tuning a hybrid application. The tutorial is available from the Intel Developer Zone at https://software.intel.com/en-us/itac-vtune-mpi-openmp-tutorial-lin.

1. Define a Performance Baseline

Start with exploring the Summary window that provides general information on your application execution. Key areas for optimization include the elapsed time and single precision floating-point operation per second (SP GFLOPS) counts. A double precision FLOP is represented as two single precision FLOPS throughout the analysis result. Red text indicates an area of potential optimization. Hover over a flag to learn more about how to improve your code.

Use the Elapsed Time and SP GFLOPS values as a baseline for comparison of versions before and after optimization.

2. Determine Optimization Opportunities

Review the Summary window to find the key optimization opportunities for your application. Performance metrics that can be improved are marked in red. Issues identified could include CPU Utilization, Memory Bound, FPU Utilization, or a combination of these. The following sections provide suggested next steps for each performance aspect:

CPU Utilization

Memory Bound

FPU Utilization

Note

FPU and GFLOPS metrics are supported on 3rd Generation Intel Core™ processors, 5th Generation Intel processors, and 6th Generation Intel processors. Limited support is available for Intel® Xeon Phi™ processors formerly code named Knights Landing. The metrics are not currently available on 4th Generation Intel processors. Expand the Details section on the analysis configuration pane to view the processor family available on your system.

3. Analyze Source

Double-click the function you want to optimize to view its related source code file in the Source/Assembly window. You can open the code editor directly from the Intel® VTune™ Amplifier and edit your code (for example, minimizing the number of calls to the hotspot function).

4. Explore Other Analysis Types

See Also