Slicer3:Performance Analysis

Slicer 3 Performance Analysis

We are looking into performance analysis on the Slicer3 codebase in order to streamline execution where possible, identify parts of the program to optimize, and determine which parts of Slicer3 are using the most system resources. We are currently in the process of determining which profilers to use on the various Slicer platforms.

Tools

Statistical Profilers

• GNU gprof
  • gprof is not a good profiler for our needs because it doesn't support profiling multithreaded code.
• oprofile
• Shark 4 (OSX)

Profilers for Multi-threaded Applications

• See the pages on ITK Registration Optimization

Runtime Instrumentation

• Callgrind / KcacheGrind

An initial valgrind suppressions file for slicer is in subversion. It includes an example command line to run it with slicer that also uses the VTK, ITK, KWWidgets suppression files.

Targets

• DICOM reader / GDCM
• vtkITK
• ImageReslice
• ITK resampler w/ deformable transform

Sample Files

oprofile:

• oprofile; run Slicer3 and exit
• oprofile; run Slicer3, load DICOM, exit

KCachegrind:

• KCachegrind; run Slicer3, load DICOM, exit
• KCachegrind; run Slicer3, load DICOM, exit

Quantify Info

Note: this is not yet working. For me, it dies trying to instrument KWWidgets.dll

An evaluation copy of Rational PurifyPlus is available from www.ibm.com.

To use this on windows, follow the install info then be sure to do the following:

• Turn off incremental linking in CMake
  • in the CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS
    • change /INCREMENTAL:YES to /INCREMENTAL:NO
    • add /fixed:NO
• rebuild Slicer3-real.exe
• create a shell with the slicer3 environment set
  • e.g. source Slicer3-build/bin/Debug/Slicer3SetupPaths.sh
• in that shell, run
  • Quantify: c:/Program\ Files/Rational/purifyplus/quantifyw.exe
  • Purify: c:/Program Files/Rational/purifyplus/purifyw.exe