Intel Advisor Explained

Intel Advisor
Developer:Intel Developer Products
Latest Release Version:2021.4
Latest Release Date:[1]
Operating System:Windows and Linux (UI-only on macOS)
Genre:Profiler
License:Free and commercial support

Intel Advisor (also known as "Advisor XE", "Vectorization Advisor" or "Threading Advisor") is a design assistance and analysis tool for SIMD vectorization, threading, memory use, and GPU offload optimization. The tool supports C, C++, Data Parallel C++ (DPC++), Fortran and Python languages. It is available on Windows and Linux operating systems in form of Standalone GUI tool, Microsoft Visual Studio plug-in or command line interface.[2] It supports OpenMP (and usage with MPI). Intel Advisor user interface is also available on macOS.

Intel Advisor is available for free as a stand-alone tool or as part of the Intel oneAPI Base Toolkit. Optional paid commercial support is available for the oneAPI Base Toolkit.

Features

Vectorization optimization

Vectorization is the operation of Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) instructions (like Intel Advanced Vector Extensions and Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512) on multiple objects in parallel within a single CPU core. This can greatly increase performance by reducing loop overhead and making better use of the multiple math units in each core.

Intel Advisor helps find the loops that will benefit from better vectorization, identify where it is safe to force compiler vectorization.[3] It supports analysis of scalar, SSE, AVX, AVX2 and AVX-512-enabled codes generated by Intel, GNU and Microsoft compilers auto-vectorization. It also supports analysis of "explicitly" vectorized codes which use OpenMP 4.x and newer as well as codes or written using C vector intrinsics or assembly language.[4] [5]

Automated Roofline analysis

Intel Advisor automates the Roofline Performance Model first proposed at Berkeley[6] and extended at the University of Lisbon.[7]

Advisor "Roofline Analysis" helps to identify if given loop/function is memory or CPU bound. It also identifies under optimized loops that can have a high impact on performance if optimized.[8] [9] [10] [11]

Intel Advisor also provides an automated memory-level roofline implementation that is closer to the classical Roofline model. Classical Roofline is especially instrumental for high performance computing applications that are DRAM-bound. Advisor memory level roofline analyzes cache data and evaluates the data transactions between different memory layers to provide guidance for improvement.[12]

Intel Advisor roofline analysis supports code running on CPU or GPU.[13] [14] It also supports integer based applications - that is heavily used in machine learning, big data domains, database applications, financial applications like crypto-coins.[15]

Threading prototyping

Software architects add code annotations to describe threading that are understood by Advisor, but ignored by the compiler. Advisor then projects the scalability of the threading and checks for synchronization errors. Advisor Threading "Suitability" feature helps to predict and compare the parallel SMP scalability and performance losses for different possible threading designs. Typical Suitability reports are shown on Suitability CPU screen-shot on the right side. Advisor Suitability provides dataset size (iteration space) modeling capabilities and performance penalties break-down (exposing negative impact caused by Load Imbalance, Parallel Runtimes Overhead and Lock Contention).[16]

Offload modelling

Advisor adds GPU offload performance modeling feature in the 2021 release. It collects application performance characteristics on a baseline platform and builds analytical performance model for target (modelled) platform.

This provides performance speedup estimation on target GPUs and overhead estimations for offloading, data transfer and scheduling region execution and pinpoints performance bottlenecks.[17] [18] [19] This information can serve for choosing offload strategy: selecting regions to offload and anticipate potential code restructuring needed to make it GPU-ready.

Customer usage

Intel Advisor is used by Schlumberger,[20] Sandia national lab, and others[21] for design and parallel algorithm research and Vectorization Advisor capabilities known to be used by LRZ and ICHEC,[22] Daresbury Lab,[23] Pexip.[24]

The step-by-step workflow is used by academia for educational purposes.[25]

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Intel® Advisor Release Notes and New Features.
  2. Web site: Command Line Use Cases. 2021-01-05. Intel. en.
  3. Web site: Optimize Vectorization Aspects of a Real-Time 3D Cardiac.... 2021-01-07. Intel. en.
  4. Web site: HPC Code Modernization Tools.
  5. Web site: Новый инструмент анализа SIMD программ — Vectorization Advisor. 2021-01-05. habr.com. ru.
  6. Web site: Roofline: An insightful Visual Performance model for multicore Architectures. Williams. Samuel. April 2009. University of Berkeley.
  7. Web site: Cache-aware Roofline model: Upgrading the loft. Ilic. Aleksandar. Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa.
  8. Web site: Roofline Analysis in Intel Advisor 2017: youtube how-to video . YouTube.
  9. Web site: Intel Advisor Roofline step-by-step Tutorial .
  10. Web site: Using Roofline Model and Intel Advisor, presented by Sam Williams, Roofline performance model author .
  11. Web site: Case Study: SimYog Improves a Simulation Tool Performance by 2x with.... 2021-01-07. Intel. en.
  12. Web site: Memory-Level Roofline Model with Intel® Advisor. 2021-01-05. Intel. en.
  13. Web site: CPU / Memory Roofline Insights Perspective. 2021-01-05. Intel. en.
  14. Web site: GPU Roofline Insights Perspective. 2021-01-05. Intel. en.
  15. Web site: Integer Roofline Modeling in Intel® Advisor. 2021-01-05. Intel. en.
  16. Web site: How to model suitability using Advisor XE 2015?.
  17. Web site: Offload Modeling Resources for Intel® Advisor Users. 2021-01-05. Intel. en.
  18. Web site: Identify Code Regions to Offload to GPU and Visualize GPU Usage (Beta). 2021-01-05. Intel. en.
  19. Web site: Offload Modeling Perspective. 2021-01-05. Intel. en.
  20. Web site: Schlumberger* - Parallelize Oil and Gas software with Intel Software products .
  21. Web site: "Leading design" company Advisor XE case study .
  22. Web site: Design Code for Parallelism and Offloading with Intel® Advisor.
  23. Web site: Computer-Aided Formulation case study: getting helping hand from the Vectorization Advisor.
  24. Web site: Pexip Speeds Enterprise-Grade Videoconferencing.
  25. Web site: Supercomputing'2012 HPC educator with Slippery Rock University .

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Intel Advisor".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.