Abstract: It is well known that as HPC applications have grown, I/O has become a bottleneck, which has required scientists to turn to in situ tools for data exploration. The focus of this exploration has typically been on simulation data. However, applications also produce ephemeral data that is optionally written to disk for post hoc analysis, but not otherwise saved or utilized by the application in subsequent time steps. One example of ephemeral data is runtime performance data. In this talk I will present the infrastructure implemented for efficiently collecting this and other data within the Uintah framework which was coupled to VisIt’s in situ toolkit for analysis and visualization. This collection and coupling allows performance data to be visualized using multiple domains giving insight previously not possible. As part this coupling, we take advantage of VisIt’s in situ custom user interface to create a “simulation dashboard” that allows for in situ computational steering and visual debugging allowing for improvements in the development and simulation workflow.

Bio: Allen Sanderson, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist at the University of Utah’s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute.