Internships/ProjectIdeas/QEMUPerformance

Summary: The nature of this project is the exploration and analysis of performance of a software tool. The tool in this case is QEMU, and its two modes of operation: user mode and system mode

PART I: (user mode)

a) select around a dozen test programs (resembling components of SPEC benchmark, but must be open source, and preferably license compatible with QEMU); test programs should be distributed like this: 4-5 FPU CPU-intensive, 4-5 non-FPU CPU intensive, 1-2 I/O intensive; b) measure execution time and other performance data in user mode across all platforms for ToT:

      - try to improve performance if there is an obvious bottleneck (but this is unlikely);
      - develop tests that will be protection against performance regressions in future.

c) measure execution time in user-mode for selected platforms for all QEMU versions in last 5 years:

      - confirm performance improvements and/or detect performance degradations.

d) summarize all results in a comprehensive form, using also graphics/data visualization.

PART II: (system mode)

  a) measure execution time and other performance data for boot/shutdown cycle for selected machines for ToT:
      - try to improve performance if there is an obvious bottleneck;
      - develop tests that will be protection against performance regressions in future.
  b) summarize all results in a comprehensive form.

DELIVERABLES

1) Each maintainer for target will be given a list of top 25 functions in terms of spent host time for each benchmark described in the previous section. Additional information and observations will be also provided, if the judgment is they are useful and relevant.

2) Each maintainer for machine (that has successful boot/shutdown cycle) will be given a list of top 25 functions in terms of spent host time during boot/shutdown cycle. Additional information and observations will be also provided, if the judgment is they are useful and relevant.

3) The community will be given all devised performance measurement methods in the form of easily reproducible step-by-step setup and execution procedures.

(parts 1) and 2) will be, of course, published to everybody, maintainers are simply singled out as main recipients and decision-makers on possible next action items)

Deliverable will be distributed over wide time interval (in other words, they will not be presented just at the end of project, but gradually during project execution).

Links:

• [1]
• [vhosts.eecs.umich.edu/mibench//Publications/MiBench.pdf]

Details:

• Skill level: intermediate
• Languages:
  • C (for performance improvements)
  • Python (for automatization)
  • potentially JavaScript (d3.js or similar library; for data visualization)
• Mentor: Aleksandar Markovic (aleksandar.markovic@rt-rk.com)
• Suggested by: Aleksandar Markovic