Thread: Precisely Measure Task Round-trip Performance of your Application

1. Objective

For performance evaluation, I want to measure how long it takes from the time I send my task to Symphony DE, to the time I receive the result.



2. Configuration Tips

• In application profile, set preStartApplication="true". By doing so, we discount SSM and SIM initial startup time (roughly an additional 500 milliseconds) from the actual Task round-trip performance.
• Remove output messages (to stout or log file) from the client the service application. By doing so, we eliminate any I/O overhead which may incur.
• Set all component (SD, SSM, SIM, API) log levels to WARN. By doing so, we eliminate I/O overhead for the system daemons. (log4j configuration files are located under SOAM_HOME/conf)

3. Code

In client application (I used samples/CPP/SampleApp/SyncClient for demonstration):

1) Include ACE's High-Resolution Timer (precise to 1 microsecond, which is 1/1000000 of a second):

Code:

#include <ace/High_Res_Timer.h> 

2) Initialize and start timer right before task is submitted:

Code:

ACE_High_Res_Timer m_timer;
 
m_timer.reset();
m_timer.start();
 
// send it
TaskInputHandlePtr input = sesPtr->sendTaskInput(attrTask); 

3) Stop timer right after result is fetched:

Code:

// Now get our results - will block here until all tasks retrieved
EnumItemsPtr enumOutput = sesPtr->fetchTaskOutput(tasksToSend)
 
m_timer.stop(); 

4) Output round-trip time (displayed in microseconds)

Code:

ACE_hrtime_t usecs;
m_timer.elapsed_microseconds(usecs);
 
cout << "Round-trip Time: " << usecs << " us" << endl; 

In Makefile:

1) Include the ACE include files:

Code:

INCLUDE = -I $(TOP)/include -I ../Common -I /home/lechen/ACE/5.4.4 

2) Include the ACE libraries:

Code:

LIBS = -L $(OUTPUT) -L $(TOP)/$(ARCH_BUILD)/lib
 -L /home/lechen/ACE/5.4.4/lib/$(ARCH_BUILD).fd6144/ -lACE \
   -lsampleCommon -lsoambase -lsoamapi 

4. My Results:

Sample SyncClient Single Task Round-Trip: ~2.9 milliseconds (0.0029 seconds). Result varies depending on message size, as well as CPU and network speed.

Code:

lechen@ib08b05-715: ./Output/SyncClient
connection ID=8759dee4-ffff-ffff-c000-00112529883c-42851248-7361
Session ID:287
Round-trip Time: 2859 us
 
lechen@ib08b05-716: ./Output/SyncClient
connection ID=87a81d16-ffff-ffff-c000-00112529883c-42851248-7361
Session ID:288
Round-trip Time: 2907 us
 
lechen@ib08b05-717: ./Output/SyncClient
connection ID=88073918-ffff-ffff-c000-00112529883c-42851248-7361
Session ID:289
Round-trip Time: 2917 us
 
lechen@ib08b05-718: ./Output/SyncClient
connection ID=885f11e2-ffff-ffff-c000-00112529883c-42851248-7361
Session ID:290
Round-trip Time: 2874 us 

5. Related Articles:

• Symphony DE Application Performance
• Testing Message Size Scalability in Symphony DE

Comments welcomed.

Do I need to include any other ACE classes to use your sample? I know for initialization of ACE you need specify several other files.

If it doesn't compile, you may need to add;

#include <ace/ACE.h>

- Ajith