TOOLS INFRASTRUCTURE WORKING GROUP (TIWG)

Objective

Promote interaction of existing and new tools to support migration of legacy sequential applications to multicore platforms and development of new parallel software.

Overview

When migrating existing sequential software to multicore platforms or developing new parallel software, programmers must use a range of tools that include tracers, profilers, and analysis tools. Although mechanisms exist to support tool interoperability for embedded applications that utilize a single, integrated development environment (IDE), today no standard exists to support the embedded multicore environment. To mitigate the issue of interoperability, the TIWG’s first year goal is to establish a trace data format standard. A subsequent goal will be to define interfaces between profilers and analysis/visualization tools. Meeting these goals will aid programmers searching for performance bottlenecks that limit the speed and capabilities of their multicore platforms.

The TIWG is also collaborating with the CE Linux Forum with Ericsson and the Linux Foundation CE Workgroup on an implementation for a de-facto trace data format standard that TIWG will define. The Linux Trace Toolkit Next Generation (LTTng) embeds a reference implementation of this format. It will subsequently be used to develop the Multicore Association's industry-standard specification.

Status

The TIWG holds regularly scheduled meetings, typically, on a bi-weekly basis. Although the end product of this working group will be publicly available, we encourage you to join the Multicore Association to participate in the discussion and development phases of this project.

The specification for the initial common trace format (CTF) is available now at http://www.efficios.com/ctf. Even as a non-member, we’d like you to review this and provide feedback.

Chairpersons