[Rd] Profiling function that contains both C++ and Fortran Code

Julian Karch karch at mpib-berlin.mpg.de
Wed Sep 9 15:46:42 CEST 2015


Hello,

I am trying to profile a function of OpenMx 
(http://openmx.psyc.virginia.edu) for CPU time. My operating system is 
OS X 10.10. OpenMx contains C++ and Fortran code. I have read the 
section regarding profiling compiled code in the manual 
(https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-exts.html#Profiling-compiled-code). 
This section and this post (http://blog.fellstat.com/?p=337) lead me to 
try Instruments. Here is what I did:

-Opened Instruments
-Chose the Time Profiler Template
-Pressed Record
-Started my script using RStudio

The output of instruments looks like this: 
http://i.stack.imgur.com/aKIQm.jpg. The command line tool "sample" 
returns the same output

The problem is that it looks like "omxunsafedgemm_", the functions that 
consumes the vast majority of the time, would be called directly from 
the Main Thread. However, this is a low level Fortran function. It is 
always called by a C++ function called "omxDGEMM". In this example 
"omxDGEMM" is first called by "omxCallRamExpection" (so almost at the 
bottom of the call tree). The total time of "omxDGEMM" is 0. Thus, the 
profiling information is currently useless.

In the original version of the package "omxDGEMM" is defined as inline. 
I changed this in the hope that it would resolve the issue. This was not 
the case. "omxunsafedgemm" is called by "omxDGEMM" like that

F77_CALL(omxunsafedgemm)(&transa, &transb,
                         &(nrow), &(ncol), &(nmid),
                         &alpha, a->data, &(a->leading),
                         b->data, &(b->leading),&beta, 		 
result->data, 		&(result->leading));

Any ideas how to obtain a sensible profiler output?


Best,

Julian Karch



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