Intel® Advisor 2022 Release Notes and New Features

Release Notes

Overview

• Intel ® Advisor 2022.3.1 may not include all the latest functional and security updates.New version of Intel® Advisor is targeted to be released around the end of 2022 and will include additional functional and security updates. Customers should update to the latest version as it becomes available.

Release Notes

Overview

• Intel ® Advisor 2022.3 may not include all the latest functional and security updates.New version of Intel® Advisor is targeted to be released around the end of 2022 and will include additional functional and security updates. Customers should update to the latest version as it becomes available.

Release Notes

Overview

• Get actionable user recommendations for optimizing data transfer reuse costs due to CPU to GPU offloading
• Analyze Intel Advisor results on a remote machine using your web browser or share your results in HTML with your colleagues– now includes GPU Roofline kernel details and data transfer details for Offload Modeling.
• See offloaded parts of the code at source-level along with performance metrics (such as kernel time spent, memory traffic etc.) in GPU Roofline perspective.

Release Notes

Overview

• Get actionable recommendations to optimize GPU General Purpose Register Files (GRF).
• Get more comprehensive analysis with expanded GPU memory and compute metrics

Release Notes

Overview

• Get actionable Recommendations to maximize GPU utilization for user code analysis with GPU Roofline.
• Estimate performance benefits of a future GPU for existing GPU code with Offload Advisor GPU-to-GPU performance modeling with both command line and GUI.
• Execute profiling and performance projection with a single command line via Offload Modeling Collection Preset, and analyze results of GPU Roofline profiling and offload modeling in a browser with interactive HTML report.

Release Notes

Overview

• Get actionable recommendations to maximize GPU utilizations using Offload Advisor Guidance. 
• Improved GPU Roofline Analysis: Gain insights into memory bound codes to remove memory subsystems bottlenecks. Get instance breakdown of each kernel to compare performance characteristics of different workloads. 
• Technical Preview Feature: Estimate performance benefits of a future GPU for existing GPU code with Offload Advisor GPU-to-GPU performance modeling.

Release Notes

Overview

• Expanded hardware support: Vectorization and Code Insights and CPU / Memory Roofline perspectives now support for 11th Gen Intel Core processors (code-named “Tiger Lake”), 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors (code-named “Ice Lake”) and 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors (code-named “Cooper Lake”). 
• More accurate GPU data transfer estimation: Use a new data reuse analysis of Offload Modeling perspective identify kernels that can reuse the same memory objects and optimize data transfer costs.
• Improved user interface:
  • Explore application source code and related metrics using a new full-screen Source view with syntax highlighting introduced for Offload Modeling and GPU Roofline Insights perspective reports
  • Gain insights into GPU kernel execution with a new Details pane introduced for a GPU Roofline Insights perspective repo

NOTE: 2021.2 release is conflicted with 2021.1 release if it was installed by YUM, DNF, or Zypper package managers. Please remove 2021.1 release before installing 2021.2 release. To install both releases side-by-side, please use web distribution. For details, see Installation Using Package Managers

Initial Release

Release Notes

Overview

• Offload Advisor: Get your code ready for efficient GPU offload even before you have the hardware. Identify offload opportunities, quantify potential speedup, locate bottlenecks, estimate data transfer costs, and get guidance on how to optimize.  
• Automated Roofline Analysis for GPUs: Visualize actual performance of GPU kernels against hardware-imposed performance limitations and get recommendations for effective memory vs. compute optimization.
• Memory-level Roofline Analysis: Pinpoint exact memory hierarchy bottlenecks (L1, L2, L3 or DRAM). 
• Flow Graph Analyzer support for DPC++: Visualize asynchronous task graphs, diagnose performance issues, and get recommendations to fix them. 
• Intuitive User Interface: New interface workflows and toolbars incorporate Roofline Analysis for GPUs and Offload Advisor.
• Intel® Iris® Xe MAX graphics support: Roofline analysis and Offload Advisor now supports Intel® Iris® Xe MAX graphics.

Release Notes

Overview

• Intel® Advisor has been updated to include more recent versions of 3rd party components, which include functional and security updates.

Release Notes

Overview

• Intel® Advisor has been updated to include more recent versions of 3rd party components, which include functional and security updates.

Intel® Advisor 2020 Update 2 introduces Memory-Level Roofline feature (previously known as Integrated Roofline, tech preview feature). Memory-Level Roofline: 

• Visualizes arithmetic intensity for a loop/function at each memory level.  
• Supports classical Roofline model by only looking at the DRAM data transfers.  
• Identifies primary bottlenecks for loops/functions based on cache simulation data.  
• Provides single-kernel Roofline guidance with optimization steps.  
• Calculates memory metrics on different cache levels (L1, L2, L3, and DRAM).

Release Notes

Overview

• Improvements to Integrated Roofline (in technical preview): easily identify the memory level limiting the performance of a loop or function and get more accurate guidance and recommendations
• Python* API now supports Python 3 versions. Python 2 support is dropped.

Release Notes

Overview

• Intel Advisor has been updated to include more recent versions of 3rd party components, which include functional and security updates. 
• Intel Advisor viewer for macOS* is now notarized to run on macOS* 10.15.

Release Notes

Overview

• Intel Advisor has been updated to include more recent versions of 3rd party components, which include functional and security updates. Users should update to the latest version.
• Roofline Guidance in Code Analytics. This feature is intended to make the Roofline chart easier to understand and use. 
• Integration support for Visual Studio 2019 Update 1.
• Improved Roofline configuration menu for easier chart customization.
• Updated command line help content.

Release Notes

Overview

• Removed requirement for flock operation in file systems. Previously Advisor failed when flock was disabled, requiring projects to be kept locally. It should now run smoothly on file systems like Lustre*.
• Added per-loop and per-application recommendations to the Summary pane. This replaces and expands on the "top 5 recommendations" section which was removed in the previous update.
• Survey and Code Analytics now support and identify which loops/functions use CLX VNNI instructions, which are often used in neural network applications.
• Column configurator has been extended to the Top-Down pane. Previously this customization feature was limited to the Survey pane.
• FLOPS and Trip Counts collections now extend existing data rather than replacing it. For example, if Trip Counts are collected, and then a second analysis is run to collect FLOPS only, the FLOPS data will be added to the result without removing the Trip Counts.
• New Preview Feature: Roofline Guidance in Code Analytics. This feature is intended to make the Roofline chart easier to understand and use. Enable by setting the environment variable ADVIXE_EXPERIMENTAL=roofline_guidance
• Support for Microsoft* Visual Studio* 2019 added.
• Flow Graph Analyzer:
  • Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux* 7 restored.
  • Bug fix to restore graph properties after interaction with hierarchical view.
  • Added support for the use of edges across graphs. This use case is restricted by default, but can be enabled from the Preferences dialogue.

Release Notes

Overview

• Improved Summary pane with a sleeker look and better program-level issue highlighting, including a new block with memory bandwidth information.
• Survey columns can now be customized using the column configurator. Configurations can be saved for later use.
• Сache Simulator configuration dialog allows visual configuration of different cache levels for Memory Access Patterns analysis.
• Simplified installation and licensing (serial numbers and license files are no longer required for this product).
• Roofline improvements:
  • Improved Roofline comparison feature visually distinguishes the compared result sets. Advisor automatically maps corresponding dots from compared results to each other with arrows and displays FLOPS delta. Filtering the roofline also takes compared results into account.
  • Roof values can be adjusted to the number of sockets used on the system to achieve more accurate performance ceilings for applications using thread pinning (such as MPI applications pinning ranks to sockets).
  • You can now export roofline snapshots in SVG format for high-quality pictures.
  • Added zone highlighting to the Roofline to visually indicate what types of bottleneck apply to dots based on position.
  • Added automatic smart roof selection that highlights relevant roofs based on the types of instruction present.
• Flow Graph Analyzer improvements:
  • Flow Graph Analyzer can be launched from Advisor GUI on Windows and Linux.
  • Can now display execution traces on CPU/core swimlanes in the timeline charts.
  • Can now select different layout schemes for the tree-map view with the squarified layout being the default.
  • Tree-map display performance improved by caching the computation in the metaxml file.
  • Scalability analysis now abridges long-running computations. Users have control over how much they want a computation abridged.
  • Support for TBB’s lightweight policy added to scalability analysis.
• Support for Fedora* 29 added

Release Notes

Overview

• Intel® Advisor 2019 Update 2 includes functional and security updates. Users should update to the latest version.

Release Notes

Overview:

• Ability to switch between “all integer operations” and “pure compute integer operations” in the Survey Grid column settings
• Integrated Roofline (preview)
  • Ability to select mode of memory-related metrics by cache level and memory operations type (Loads, Stores, both operations) in the Survey Grid column settings
  • Ability to export Roofline html report for different memory levels and operation types via command line interface
• Ability to export Integer and INT+FLOAT operations Roofline html report via command line interface
• Detecting usage of VNNI instructions in Traits column
• Introduced 64-bit Graphical User Interface on Windows, that allows working with huge results
• Added “expand sub-tree” context menu option to Top-down tree, simplifying exploring long call chains
• Decreased overheads for Trip Counts, FLOPS and Roofline analyses with stacks collection
• Recommendations enhancements:
  • Added recommendation for Reciprocal instruction in AVX512
  • Added recommendation to enable code alignment with “#pragma code_align” for efficient use of L1 instruction cache
  • Added recommendation on vector length overriding in ICC 2019
  • Updated recommendation "Use the Fortran 2008 CONTIGUOUS attribute" by adding new compiler options
• New OS support:
  • Red Hat* Enterprise Linux* 6.10
  • Ubuntu* 18.10
  • MacOS* 10.14

Release Notes

Overview:

New Since Last Update:

• Optimize integer calculations using Integer Roofline analysis 
• Get a more accurate memory footprint and check multiple hardware configurations with cache simulation
• macOS* user interface for viewing and analyzing data collected on Linux* or Windows*
• Productively prototype graph algorithms with Flow Graph Analyzer
• New recommendation: optimize standard algorithms in C++ with Parallel STL

New Since 2018:

• Roofline enhancements
  • Roofline with Callstacks is now available (more information)
  • Share results with colleagues by exporting a dynamic HTML copy of the roofline analysis: advixe-cl –report roofline –report-output=path/to/output.html
  • "Filter-in" arbitrary subset of dots on Roofline chart for simplifying complex charts analysis and saving only selected dots to bitmaps
  • Ability to adjust the Roofline to a custom number of threads to see the practical performance limits for a given application.
  • Roofline benchmarks are now synchronized for multi-rank MPI applications, so that the roof values will be the same on all ranks running on the same physical node
  • Ability to compare several roofline results on the same chart
  • Collect roofline data with a single CLI command: advixe-cl –collect roofline …
• Reduce overhead for faster analysis results using selective profiling
  • Decrease overhead for Memory Access Patterns and Dependencies analyses by limiting loop call count and analysis duration in project properties
  • Selective profiling for Roofline, FLOPS and Trip Counts collections to decrease analysis scope and decrease overhead
• Usability improvements
  • Font size can be now customized in Options menu. This may help to adjust GUI appearance in SSH X-forwarding sessions
  • Ability to select loops on the command line by source file and line: advixe-cl --mark-up-loops --select main.cpp:12,other.cpp:198
  • Easily generate HTML report with python: advixe-python to_html.py ProjectDir
• Recommendations tab improved:
  • The Recommendations tab has a new, easier to use layout
  • User code specific parameters for recommendations, such as a certain value of suggested unroll factor or the name of a function to be inlined
  • New recommendation: use non-temporal store (NTS) instructions to improve memory bound application performance

Preview Features:

• Integrated Roofline showing which exact memory layer is the bottleneck for each loop. Set the environment variable ADVIXE_EXPERIMENTAL=int_roofline to activate this feature. (NEW)

Operating System Support:

• Fedora* 28 (NEW)
• Red Hat* Enterprise Linux* 7.5 (NEW)
• SUSE* Linux Enterprise Server* 15 (NEW)
• MacOS*: 10.11.x, 10.12.x and 10.13.x (NEW)
• Microsoft* Windows* 10 build 17134
• Ubuntu* 18.04
• SUSE* Linux Enterprise Server* 12 SP3

Release Notes

Overview:

• Optimize integer calculations using Integer Roofline analysis
• Get a more accurate memory footprint and check multiple hardware configurations with cache simulation
• New recommendation: optimize standard algorithms in C++ with Parallel STL
• Preview Feature: Integrated Roofline showing which exact memory layer is the bottleneck for each loop. Set the environment variable ADVIXE_EXPERIMENTAL=int_roofline to activate this feature.
• New OS Support:
  • Fedora* 28
  • Red Hat* Enterprise Linux* 7.5
  • SUSE* Linux Enterprise Server* 15

Release Notes

Overview:

• Roofline Enhancements:
  • Experimental Feature: IntOPS-based Roofline. Access this feature by setting the environment variable ADVIXE_EXPERIMENTAL=int_roofline
  • Ability to export Roofline chart in HTML format from the command line.
  • Roofs can now be scaled to a custom number of threads.
• Usability Improvements:
  • MAP analysis can now be stopped by a set condition to reduce collection overhead.
  • Batch mode can now be limited to a specified number of top hot innermost loops.
• Bug fixes
• Additional OS Support:
  • Microsoft* Windows* 10 build 17134
  • Ubuntu* 18.04
  • SUSE* Linux Enterprise Server* 12 SP3

Release Notes

Overview:

• "First Site Instance Footprint" metric added to Memory Access Patterns.
• Roofline improvements:
  • Loop performance limits are visualized on mouseover.
  • Loops can be filtered into or out of a Roofline chart.
  • Multiple Roofline results can be compared on the same chart.
  • Roofline benchmarks can be synchronized for multi-rank MPI applications with the "--benchmark-sync" option.
  • Controls that aren't visible due to the Roofline window being too small are now accessible from the button.
• Recommendations improvements:
  • The layout of the recommendations pane has been improved.
  • Certain recommendations now reflect details of the analyzed code.
  • New recommendation added: use non-temporal store (NTS) instructions to improve memory bound application performance.
• Usability improvements:
  • Loops can be selected for advanced analysis on the command line using source file and line number.
  • Font size can be customized in Options menu.
  • Overhead for Memory Access Patterns and Dependencies analyses can be decreased with new project properties to limit loop call counts (Dependencies only) and analysis duration (both analyses).
  • Filter state is now persistent on re-opening results.
• New operating system support:
  • Fedora* 27
  • Ubuntu* 17.10
  • Microsoft* Windows* 10 RS3

Release Notes

Overview:

• Selective profiling for Roofline, FLOPS and Trip Counts collections to decrease analysis scope and decrease overhead
• General availability of Roofline with callstacks (a.k.a. Hierarchical Roofline)
• Improved finalization speed
• Usability Improvements
  • Run Roofline in command line with single command: advixe-cl –collect roofline
  • Improved UI responsiveness
  • Progress bar for issues detection
  • Single html report generated from Python to share data easily in one file
  • Suppressed warnings on missing debug info from system modules
  • Hints to configure search paths if symbols not resolved

Release Notes

Overview:

New Since Last Update:

• Total FLOPS metric for Hierarchical Roofline available in Top Down tab when hierarchical data is collected
• New recommendation: "Possible inefficient conflict-detection instructions present"
• Advisor now reports names of serialized/scalar functions preventing vectorization
• GUI Improvements
  • Analysis Start/Toolbar button improvements
  • Recommendations Tab navigation/design improvements
  • MKL overview and Dynamic Instruction Mix output visibility has been extended.
  • General Roofline GUI improvements

New Since 2017 Initial Release:

• Cache-Aware Roofline modeling (more information)
• Filtering by module
• Added the "joined" command line report type that outputs both Survey and Refinement data.
  The command format is: advixe-cl -report joined -project-dir MyResults

Preview Features:

• Cache Simulator: set ADVIXE_EXPERIMENTAL=cachesim before launching Advisor (NEW)
• Experimental support for analyzing Python code (NEW)
• Hierarchical Roofline (a modification of the Cache-Aware Roofline)
• Experimental support for viewing Advisor data through a Python API
  Examples can be found in {INSTALL_DIR}/pythonapi/examples

Improved OS/Processor/IDE Support:

• Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors (NEW)
• Fedora* 26 and SUSE* Linux Enterprise Server* 12 SP2 (NEW)
• Microsoft* Windows Server* 2016, Debian* 9, and Ubuntu* 17.04
• Microsoft Visual Studio* 2017 IDE

Linux* Release Notes Windows* Release Notes

Overview:

• Added support for Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
• Added support for SUSE* Linux Enterprise Server* 12 SP2
• Added support for Microsoft* Windows Server 2016
• Bug fixes

Linux* Release Notes Windows* Release Notes

Overview:

• Bug fixes

Linux* Release Notes Windows* Release Notes

Overview:

• Hierarchical Roofline preview feature. Set the environment variable ADVIXE_EXPERIMENTAL=roofline_ex before launching Advisor (data re-collection may be required).
• Experimental support for accessing Advisor data via Python API. See examples in the {install_dir}/pythonapi/examples. API is subject to change in the future releases.
• New recommendations:
  • Force scalar remainder for loops with low mask utilization on AVX512.
  • Extended “Gather recommendation” with “Constant (non-unit)” pattern.
• Roofline enhancements:
  • Customization of roof values and chart borders.
  • Persistence for roofs visibility and custom values (note that auto save delay is 20 seconds).
  • Improved scaling of histogram.
• Joined Survey and Refinement CLI report.
• MKL breakdown in Summary.
• Divided read/write access in Memory Access Patterns report.
• Added support for Microsoft Visual Studio* 2017.

Linux* Release Notes Windows* Release Notes

Overview

• Cache-Aware Roofline modeling
• Improved Trip Counts and FLOPS
• Filtering by Module
• Dynamic Instruction Mixes
• Re-finalization
• Updated OS Support:
  • Support for Windows* Server 2016, Fedora* 25, and Ubuntu* 16.10
  • All license types now support cross-OS analysis

Linux* Release Notes Windows* Release Notes

Overview:

• Cache-Aware Roofline preview feature
• Analysis workflow improvements
• Recommendations display in Summary and Refinement Reports
• New recommendations
• Ability to stop refinement analysis collection if every site has executed at least once.

Linux* Release Notes Windows* Release Notes

Overview:

• Workflow improvements
  • Batch Mode
  • Improved MPI workflow
• Memory Access Patterns, Survey and Loop Analytics improvements