View-Contention Tool

The view_contention tool examines the LinkTline.dat file produced by the CSIM's Performance Models after a simulation. It counts the contention and normal transfer events, and displays the counts to your screen. It also produces a timeline-histogram graph showing where in time the contention events occurred, and how many within each span of time.

The view_contention tool:

Shows the number of contention events that occurred in your simulation.
Shows the number of normal transfer events that occurred.
Produces a timeline-histogram graph of number-of-contentions versus time.

Usage:

	view_contention LinkTline.dat

It will show the contention- and message- counts to the screen.
The normal count represents the number of successful messages
that went through each link.  For example, if one message went through a path
containing 10-links, the message count would be 10.
The number of contentions indicates the number of times a message transfer
was attempted at a link and was turned-away due to contention.
Each retry increments the contention count.

By default, view_contention also produces a histogram graph file of the same root
name, but with .hst suffix, (ie. LinkTline.hst).
View the histogram by:

	xgraph LinkTline.hst


Options
The default graph-name can be overridden by placing a second file-name on the
command line.  The graph will be written to that file.

By default, the histogram window (resolution) is set to 100-uS = 0.1-mS interval.
The histogram integrates contention events within the window interval to determine
the hight of the histogram bar.
You can specify a finer or coarser window by using the -w command-line option.

Example:


	view_contention LinkTline.dat -w 0.5



Example:
	> csim/tools/view_contention LinkTline.dat

	    Writing contention histogram graph file LinkTline.hst
	        (View with:   xgraph LinkTline.hst )

	    Summary:
	       9756 Contention Events
	      44108 Normal (Non-Contention) Transfer Events


       > xgraph LinkTline.hst









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