The Syrlfhefdc-Pertur6ntio1t Tuning (SPT) melhodology ts bast d on an tml~irical approach that infroduces artificial delays info fhe h1IJfD progriana and etapiures tlae effects ojsuclt delays by usitty the modern brusaeh of slallsiics culled design of cxptri~nenls. SPT provides the basis oJ u pou-erful tool lor tunang JlIhfD progmnts that is pvrIalde ac~.oss mochi~les und arehn'tecipares. TI16 purpose of this paper is lo explain the general ~pproath urrtl to extend it to address 3pecijc features thai arc the n~a~n source of poor performance on the sharcd mer~tary progranzmlng model. These include p~rforrnnrrre dcgmd~tion due to load tmbalance and isisuflcle~tr pnrallclism, ouerl~ead irki~odaced by sync6ro~i:nfsor~s and by accessing shared data structures, at~d cornp~rte tim~ bottlenecks. [ife illuslrate the practiclility of SPT by dernonstraitng its use on two very digcrcni cast siadies: a large image prucessi~rg benchmark and a parallel quicksort.
['Robert Snelick', 'Joseph JáJá', 'Raghu N. Kacker', 'Gordon Lyon']
Using Synthetic-Perturbation Techniques for Tuning Shared Memory Programs* (Extended Abstract)