Integrating Visualization (and Visualization Experts) with Performance Analysis

Abstract

Identifying and understanding poor performance is an increasingly difficult task due to the growing complexity and scale of target applications and systems. Visualization is an important tool for exploratory and comprehension-centered goals, leading to development of visualizations and visual tools from both the performance analysis and visualization communities. However, there are several obstacles to wide-spread adoption of these visual tools and techniques, such as scale and ease-of-use. Furthermore, the challenge of visualizing such large and complex data often takes precedence over the other challenges that must be solved to get these tools into the hands of users. Addressing these issues requires making trade-offs which in turn require a firm understanding of performance analysts' needs and workflows. Through several projects in performance visualization, I discuss observed barriers to designing and deploying performance visualization solutions as well as the perspective of visualization-focused experts in working in the performance analysis space. I then propose directions focusing on these gaps between the visual design and integration into performance analysis workflows.