The IBM Parallel Environment for AIX (PE) program product is a set of programs designed to help you develop parallel Fortran, C, or C++ programs and execute them on an IBM RS/6000 SP, a networked cluster of IBM RS/6000 systems, or a mixed SP/cluster environment.
Before following the instructions in this book on how to install the PE software, you should have a basic idea of the components that make up the PE product and how they fit together. PE consists of six components that help you develop, debug, analyze, and run parallel programs. The usage of these components is discussed in:
If you are new to PE, you will probably find IBM Parallel Environment for AIX: Hitchhiker's Guide, GC23-3895 useful.
The PE components are:
These libraries, which contain subroutines that help application developers parallelize their code, are described in IBM Parallel Environment for AIX: MPI Programming and Subroutine Reference, GC23-3894.
This is software that helps ease your transition from serial to parallel processing by hiding many of the differences and allowing you to continue using standard AIX tools and techniques. When you start a parallel job, the POE Partition Manager contacts the remote nodes, starts your code running, and oversees its operation.
POE also contains two X-Windows analysis tools: the Program Marker Array and the System Status Array. The Program Marker Array is a run-time analysis tool that lets you monitor a program's execution. The System Status Array lets you monitor the operational status and CPU utilization of processor nodes.
For more information, refer to IBM Parallel Environment for AIX: Operation and Use, Volume 1, SC28-1979.
PE has the following two parallel debuggers:
pedb is a separately installed fileset and is described in IBM Parallel Environment for AIX: Operation and Use, Volume 2, SC28-1980.
| Note: | In PE release levels prior to Version 2 Release 2, pedb was known as xpdbx. |
This tool consists of a trace generation facility and a trace display system that allow you to visualize performance characteristics of your program and system. You can use VT to play back traces recorded during a program's run (trace visualization) or as an online monitor of system activity (performance monitoring).
VT is a separately installable fileset and is described in IBM Parallel Environment for AIX: Operation and Use, Volume 2, SC28-1980.
This is a tool that helps you analyze your parallel or serial application's performance quickly and easily. It uses procedure profiling information to construct a graphical display of the functions within your application.
Xprofiler provides quick access to the profiled data, which lets you identify the functions that are the most CPU-intensive. The graphical user interface also lets you manipulate the display in order to focus on the application's critical areas.
Xprofiler is a separately installable fileset and is described in IBM Parallel Environment for AIX: Operation and Use, Volume 2, SC28-1980.
This is a separate fileset that contains the PE documentation. This documentation consists of: