This is version 0.0.1.0 of hpapi. It provides a Haskell binding for the Performance API (PAPI) library, http://icl.cs.utk.edu/papi/.

It is an early alpha release and the interface may change but for basic use of the High Level interface it should be fully functional.

The latest version can be downloaded from: http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/hpapi

The source repository is at: http://code.haskell.org/hpapi/

Please report any bugs to <adamsmd [AT] cs.indiana.edu>.

Installation

This package requires the PAPI C library and kernel modules to be installed before you get started.

But the binding itself uses a standard Cabal building system so it can be simply installed with:

runhaskell Setup.hs configure runhaskell Setup.hs build runhaskell Setup.hs install

The last command may need to be run as root.

Usage

The basic use of this library is demonstrated by the following example.

main = do [l1,tlb,fp] <- withCounters [papi_l1_dcm, papi_tlb_dm, papi_fp_ins] ioOperationToMeasure print (l1, tlb, fp)

Documentation

Documentation is minimal at the moment. In the mean time, the original PAPI library documentation may prove useful.

Future Directions

• The following "advanced" features of PAPI have been left out in this first release:

  • Multiplexing
  • Threads
  • Locks
  • Overflow
  • Statistical Profiling

• Separate GC and mutator counters

• Integration with GHC's built-in PAPI

• Improved documentation.

• Depending on feedback, modules may get reorganized

• Better handling of errors from the PAPI library (currently they just throw IO errors)

• The PAPI C library is inconsistent on whether EventCode is a signed int or an unsigned int. This causes minor issues to be fixed.

Comparison with GHC's built-in PAPI

GHC supports a built-in version of PAPI (see http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/PAPI). This system is different in a few ways.

First, hpapi allows you to measure specific parts of a program while GHCI's PAPI only does whole program measurement

Second, since hpapi is a library you can have fine grained and sophisticated control over how things are measured. On the other hand GHC's PAPI as part of the RTS gives you less control, but on the plus side doesn't require any modification to the program.

Finally, GHC's PAPI splits apart the counts that come from the garbage collector from those that come from the mutator, while hpapi combines them. This is a limitation of hpapi we hope to correct some time in the future.

It remains to be seen whether it would be worth while to unify these two systems.

Acknowledgments

Supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation under grant number CCF-0541364.