About Performance Data

Performance data is collected by a tool called the Collector from a program while it is running. The Collector writes the data to files that can be read, analyzed, and displayed by the Performance Analyzer. See Performance Data Storage for more information on these files.

The Collector collects two classes of data: profiling data and tracing data. Profiling data is collected by recording data at intervals that can be set by the user. Tracing data is collected by recording information on calls to various library routines.

The two kinds of profiling done by the Collector are clock-based profiling and hardware counter overflow profiling. The Collector does three kinds of tracing: synchronization delay tracing, MPI tracing, and heap (memory allocation) tracing.

The Collector also collects global data for the process, which includes accurate timing information. This data is written in records that are called sample points.

The raw data collected by the Collector is converted by the Performance Analyzer in to measures of program performance called metrics.

For more information about the kinds of performance data, choose from the following topics:

Clock Data
Hardware Counter Data
Synchronization Wait Tracing Data
MPI Tracing Data
Heap Tracing (Memory Allocation) Data
Sample Points

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