Initialization, Termination and Control

Intel® Trace Analyzer and Collector User and Reference Guide

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ID 767272

Date 10/31/2024

Version 2021.10

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Initialization, Termination and Control

Intel® Trace Collector is automatically initialized within the execution of the MPI_Init() function. During the execution of the MPI_Finalize() function, the trace data collected in memory or in temporary files is consolidated and written into the permanent trace file(s), and Intel Trace Collector is terminated. Thus, it is an error to call Intel TraceCollector API functions before MPI_Init() has been executed or after MPI_Finalize() has returned.

In non-MPI applications it may be necessary to start and stop Intel Trace Collector explicitly. These calls also help write programs and libraries that use Intel Trace Collector without depending on MPI.

VT_initialize(), VT_getrank(), VT_finalize() can be used to write applications or libraries which work both with and without MPI, depending on whether they are linked with libVT.a plus MPI or with libVTcs.a (distributed tracing) and no MPI.

If the MPI that Intel Trace Collector was compiled for provides MPI_Init_thread(), then VT_init() will call MPI_Init_thread() with the parameter required set to MPI_THREAD_FUNNELED. This is sufficient to initialize multithreaded applications where only the main thread calls MPI. If your application requires a higher thread level, then either use MPI_Init_thread() instead of VT_init() or (if VT_init() is called for example, by your runtime environment) set the environment variable VT_THREAD_LEVEL to a value of 0 till 3 to choose thread levels MPI_THREAD_SINGLE till MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE.

It is not an error to call VT_initialize() twice or after a MPI_Init().

In an MPI application written in C, the program parameters must be passed, because the underlying MPI might require them. Otherwise they are optional, and 0 or a NULL pointer may be used. If parameters are passed, then the number of parameters and the array itself may be modified, either by MPI or Intel Trace Collector itself.

Intel Trace Collector assumes that argv[0] is the executable name and uses this string to find the executable and as the basename for the default logfile name. Other parameters are ignored unless there are special --itc-args parameters.

See the description of the following functions:

The following functions control the tracing of threads in a multithreaded application:

The recording of performance data can be controlled on a per-process basis by calls to the VT_traceon() and VT_traceoff() functions: a thread calling VT_traceoff() will no longer record any state changes, MPI communication or counter events. Tracing can be re-enabled by calling the VT_traceon() function. The collection of statistics data is not affected by calls to these functions. With the API function VT_tracestate() a process can query whether events are currently being recorded.

See the description of functions:

With the Intel Trace Collector configuration mechanisms described in Filtering Trace Data, the recording of state changes can be controlled per symbol or activity. For any defined symbol, the VT_symstate() function returns whether data recording for that symbol has been disabled.

Find the function description in the following section:

VT_symstate

Intel Trace Collector minimizes the instrumentation overhead by first storing the recorded trace data locally in the memory of each processor and saving it to disk only when the memory buffers are filled up. Calling the VT_flush() function forces a process to save the in-memory trace data to disk, and mark the duration of this in the trace. After returning, Intel Trace Collector continues to work normally.

VT_flush

Intel Trace Collector makes its internal clock available to applications, which can be useful to write instrumentation code that works with MPI and non-MPI applications.

For more detailed information, refer to the following sections:

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Intel® Trace Analyzer and Collector User and Reference Guide

Initialization, Termination and Control