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

Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor (Host Launch) - Launch Application Target Type

Use this configuration to specify an analysis target activated from the host system and running on the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor, for example: an offload application, OpenCL™ program, MPI rank, script, and so on. This target type is available for the Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE only.

Prerequisites: Make sure to prepare your coprocessor system for analysis:

To access the analysis target configuration:

  1. Open the Analysis Target window.

  2. From the left pane, choose Accessible Targets if you need to configure and launch a target for a platform accessible from this host, or choose Arbitrary Targets to create a command line configuration for a target not accessible from this host.

  3. Under the selected target group, choose the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor (host launch) target system.

  4. From the right pane, select the Launch Application target type in the drop-down menu and specify the required card number in the on coprocessor card field. You may specify one card only. By default, card 0 is used.

    For an arbitrary target, make sure to choose an operating system your target will be running with: Windows or GNU/Linux.

Basic Options

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Application field

Specify a host script launching an application on the card or a host application (offload, mpirun, or OpenCL) submitting work to the card.

Application parameters field

Specify input parameters for your application. Click the Modify button to choose a file or a folder as an input.

Use application directory as working directory check box

Automatically match your working and application directory (enabled by default). An application directory is the directory where your application resides. For example, for the application /home/foo/barthe application directory is /home/foo. Application and working directories may be different if, for example, an application file is located in one directory but should be launched from a different directory (working directory).

Working directory field

Specify a directory to use for launching your analysis target. By default, this directory coincides with the application directory.

Managed code profiling mode menu

Select a profiling mode for managed code. Managed mode attributes data to managed source and only collects managed portion. Native mode collects everything but does not attribute data to managed source. Mixed mode collects everything and attributes data to managed source where appropriate.

Inherit system environment variables check box

Inherit and merge system and user-defined environment variables. Otherwise, only the user-defined variables are set.

User-defined environment variables field

Set environment variables required for running your application. Use the Modify button to add, edit, or remove variables.

Automatically resume collection after (sec)

Specify the time that should elapse before the data collection is resumed. When this options is used, the collection starts in the paused mode automatically.

Automatically stop collection after (sec)

Set the duration of data collection in seconds starting from the target run. This is useful if you want to exclude some post-processing activities from the analysis results.

For Arbitrary Targets only:

Use MPI launcher check box

Enable the check box to generate a command line configuration for MPI analysis. Configure the following MPI analysis options:

  • MPI launcher: Select an MPI launcher that should be used for your analysis. You can either enable the Intel MPI launcher option (default) or select Other and specify a launcher of your choice.

  • Number of ranks: Specify the number of ranks used for your application.

  • Profile ranks: Use All to profile all ranks, or choose Selective and specify particular ranks to profile, for example: 2-4,6-7,8.

  • Result location: Specify a relative or absolute path to the directory where the analysis result should be stored.

Advanced Options

Use the Advanced section to provide more details on your target configuration.

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Custom collector

Provide a command line for launching an external collection tool, if any. You can later import the custom collection data (time intervals and counters) in a CSV format to a VTune Amplifier result. Click the Modify button to add a path to your external collector.

Analyze child processes check box

Collect data on processes launched by the target process. Use this option when profiling an application with the script.

Modify button

Click the Modify button to open the Per-process Configuration dialog box and specify child processes to analyze. For example, if your target application calls shell or makes processes, you can choose to exclude them from analysis and focus only on the processes you develop.

This option is not applicable to hardware event-based analysis types.

Duration time estimate menu

Estimate the application duration time. This value affects the size of collected data. For long running targets, sampling interval is increased to reduce the result size. For hardware event-based sampling analysis types, the VTune Amplifier uses this estimate to apply a multiplier to the configured sample after value.

Allow multiple runs check box

Enable multiple runs to achieve more precise results for hardware event-based collections. When disabled, the collector multiplexes events running a single collection, which lowers result precision.

Analyze system-wide check box

Enable analyzing all processes running on the system. When disabled, only the target process is analyzed. This option is applicable to hardware event-based sampling analysis types only.

Limit collected data by spin box

If the amount of raw collected data is very large and takes long to process, use any of the following options to limit the collected data size:

  • Result size from collection start, MB: Set the maximum possible result size (in MB) to collect. VTune Amplifier will start collecting data from the beginning of the target execution and suspend data collection when the specified limit for the result size is reached. For unlimited data size, specify 0.

  • Time from collection end, sec: Set the timer enabling the analysis only for the last seconds before the target run or collection is terminated. For example, if you specified 2 seconds as a time limit, the VTune Amplifier starts the data collection from the very beginning but saves the collected data only for the last 2 seconds before you terminate the collection.

Note

The size of data stored in the result directory may not exactly match the specified result size due to the following reasons:

  • The collected data may slightly exceed the limit since the VTune Amplifier only checks the data size periodically.

  • During finalization, the VTune Amplifier loads the raw data into a database with additional information about source and binary files.

CPU mask

Specify CPU(s) to collect data on (for example: 2-8,10,12-14). This option is applicable to hardware event-based analysis types only.

Trace MPI check box (Linux targets only)

Configure collectors to trace MPI code and determine MPI rank IDs in case of a non-Intel MPI library implementation.

Result location options

Select where you want to store your result file. By default, the result is stored in the project directory.

Example

This configuration starts 4 MPI ranks on the host system and 2 ranks on the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor:

Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor (host launch) target configuration

What's Next

Click the Choose Analysis button on the right to switch to the Analysis Type tab for selecting, configuring, and launching an analysis. The Analysis Type tab displays analysis types applicable to the specified target type.

Note

You can launch an analysis only for an accessible target. For an arbitrary target, you can only generate a command line configuration, save it to the buffer and later launch it on the intended host.

See Also