Performance Measurement of Novice HPC Programmers Code

Performance is one of the key factors of improving productivity in High Performance Computing (HPC). In this paper we discuss current studies in the field of performance measurement of codes captured in classroom experiments for the High Productivity Computing Project (HPCS). We give two examples of measurements introducing two new hypotheses: spending more effort doesn't always result in improvement of performance for novices; the use of higher level MPI functions promises better performance for novices. We also present a tool - the Automated Performance Measurement System (APMS). APMS helps to partially automate the measurement of the performance of a set of parallel programs with several inputs. The design and implementation of the tool is flexible enough to allow other researchers to conduct similar studies.