Viper: A Tool for the Visualisation of Parallel Programs

Peter van der Stok

Appeared in: 3rd Euromicro Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Processing, pp 540-546, Sanremo, Italy, 25-27 january, 1995.

ABSTRACT

The VIPER tool visualises the execution of a parallel program. VIPER focusses on the class of parallel programs constructed around the Mona Lisa parallel programming paradigm. Mona Lisa is a typed paradigm, providing the user with a small set of high level primitives for data exchange. The information provided by VIPER is directly related to the execution of these primitives. This makes the tool more suitable for behavioural analysis and debugging compared to paradigm independent tools such as ParaGraph. Five graphical views are supplied by VIPER. The most important ones are: an animation view showing the parallel program as a collection of interacting modules, and a space time view displaying the module interaction over time. The construction of these views is based on trace messages, produced by the parallel program during execution. The trace messages have to be correctly ordered to allow a consistent observation of the distributed computation. VIPER performs this run construction on the fly (allowing on-line visualisation), with minimal latency and maximum efficiency in terms of trace message generation, size and processing.

Postscript