VeriTracer: Context-enriched tracer for floating-point arithmetic analysis

Abstract

VeriTracer automatically instruments a code and traces the accuracy of floating-point variables over time. VeriTracer enriches the visual traces with contextual information such as the call site path in which a value was modified. Contextual information is important to understand how the floating-point errors propagate in complex codes. VeriTracer is implemented as an LLVM compiler tool on top of Verificarlo. We demonstrate how VeriTracer can detect accuracy loss and quantify the impact of using a compensated algorithm on ABINIT, an industrial HPC application for Ab Initio quantum computation.