Enhancing software-hardware co-design for HEP by low-overhead profiling of single- and multi-threaded programs on diverse architectures with Adaptyst

Abstract

The paper introduces Adaptyst, an open-source and architecture-agnostic tool designed to enhance software-hardware co-design for complex applications like High Energy Physics (HEP). Adaptyst provides low-overhead profiling of single- and multi-threaded programs, tracing both on- and off-CPU activity while addressing limitations found in existing tools like Linux "perf." The successful validation of Adaptyst across x86-64, arm64, and RISC-V architectures positions it as a critical framework for systems ranging from embedded devices to High-Performance Computing.

Report

Key Highlights

• Tool Introduction: The core innovation is Adaptyst (formerly AdaptivePerf), an open-source, architecture-agnostic profiling tool.
• Goal: To enhance software-hardware co-design and mitigate increasing computational demands, especially for large, complex applications like those found in HEP.
• Functionality: Provides low-overhead profiling of single- and multi-threaded programs, tracing all spawned threads and processes, and analyzing on- and off-CPU activity.
• Competitive Edge: Adaptyst is explicitly designed to address the main shortcomings of the standard Linux "perf" tool.
• Roadmap: The project is planned to evolve into a comprehensive software-hardware co-design framework capable of scaling from embedded systems up to HPC environments.

Technical Details

• Target Applications: Large and complex codes where computational and procurement challenges are significant.
• Profiling Capabilities: On-CPU and off-CPU activity monitoring, thread/process tracing, and analysis of low-level software-hardware interactions (limited by hardware support).
• Architecture Support (Tested): The tool has been successfully tested on diverse Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs), specifically:
  • x86-64
  • arm64
  • RISC-V
• Availability: Adaptyst is an open-source project.

Implications

• RISC-V Ecosystem Maturation: The successful testing and architecture-agnostic nature of Adaptyst, confirming support for RISC-V, demonstrates that the RISC-V ISA is now a fully viable platform for highly sophisticated, production-grade performance analysis tools crucial for major scientific domains like HEP.
• Enabling Co-design: Adaptyst facilitates the core philosophy of RISC-V—custom hardware acceleration. By providing deep insights into software-hardware interactions across diverse ISAs, it allows developers to make informed optimization decisions necessary for tailoring RISC-V cores or accelerators.
• Scaling and Versatility: The roadmap aiming for scalability from embedded to HPC directly benefits the fragmented and growing RISC-V ecosystem, ensuring that performance methodologies are consistent whether developing an edge device or a powerful datacenter accelerator.
• Open Source Alignment: As an open-source tool, Adaptyst aligns with the RISC-V open standards approach, promoting transparency, community contribution, and rapid adaptation to new hardware extensions or microarchitectural features inherent in the RISC-V specification.