Parallel Tools GUI Framework

Many parallel performance, profiling, and debugging tools require a graphical way of displaying the very large datasets typically gathered from high performance computing (HPC) applications. Most tool projects create their graphical user interfaces (GUI) from scratch, many times spending project resources on simply redeveloping commonly used infrastructure. We propose to create a multi-platform GUI framework, based on Nokias popular Qt4 libraries, which will specifically address the needs of these parallel tools. This proposed Parallel Tools GUI Framework (PTGF) will use a plugin architecture facilitating rapid GUI development and reduced development costs for new and existing tool projects by allowing the reuse of many common GUI elements, called widgets. Planned widgets include, 2D and 3D data visualizations, a source code viewer with syntax highlighting, and integrated help and welcome screens. Application programming interface (API) design focus will be placed on minimizing the time to getting a functional tool working, and incorporating plain-text configuration files will be used where possible. Having a standard, unified, and user-friendly interface which operates on multiple platforms will benefit HPC application developers by reducing training time and allowing users to move between tools rapidly during a single session. Many parallel performance, profiling, and debugging tools require a graphical way of displaying the large datasets typically gathered from high performance computing (HPC) applications. Most tool projects create their graphical user interfaces (GUI) from scratch, many times spending project resources on simply redeveloping commonly needed infrastructure. We propose to create a multi-platform GUI framework, which will specifically address these needs by providing GUI elements common to parallel tools. Application programming interface (API) design focus will be placed on minimizing the time to getting a functional tool working. Work in Phase I will revolve around developing the base collection of libraries and plugins that can be utilized by parallel tool developers to quickly create full-featured graphical user interfaces. This includes creating graphical controls and data visualizations that parallel tools commonly require to make their GUIs user-friendly and more intuitive, and a help system that puts everything from reference materials to video tutorials at the users fingertips. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: New and existing tools can be easily migrated into the framework, allowing new tool features to be quickly added, with the reliability of tested stable code. System administrators will find it easier to keep this single system up to date with the latest releases, than manually updating multiple tools.