Instrumentation and Measurement Strategies for Flexible and Portable Empirical Performance Evaluation

Flexibility and portability are important concerns for productive empirical performance evaluation. We claim that these features are best supported by robust instrumen-tation and measurement strategies, and their integration. Using the TAU performance system as an exemplar performance toolkit, a case study in performance evaluation is considered. Our goal is both to highlight flexibility and portability requirements and to consider how instrumenta-tion and measurement techniques can address them. The main contribution of the paper is methodological, in its advocation of a guiding principle for tool development and enhancement. Recent advancements in the TAU system are described from this perspective.