Enhancing the in Situ Visualization of Performance Data in Parallel CFD Applications

This paper continues the work initiated by the authors on the feasibility of using ParaView as  visualization software for the analysis of parallel CFD codes’ performance. Current performance  tools are unable to show their data on top of complex simulation geometries (e.g. an aircraft  engine). In our previous paper, a plugin for the open-source performance tool Score-P has been  introduced, which intercepts an arbitrary number of manually selected code regions (mostly functions)  and send their respective measurements – amount of executions and cumulative time spent  – to ParaView (through its in situ library, Catalyst), as if they are any other flow-related variable.  This paper adds to such plugin the capacity to also show communication data (messages sent  between MPI ranks) on top of the CFD mesh. Testing is done again with Rolls-Royce’s in-house  CFD code, Hydra. The plugin’s original feature (regions’ measurements) is here revisited, in a bigger  test-case, which is also used to illustrate the new feature (communication data). The benefits  and overhead of the tool are discussed.