cyPAPI: A Python API for PAPI permormance measurement

What is PAPI?

The Performance Application Programming Interface (PAPI) supplies a consistent interface and methodology for collecting performance counter information from various hardware and software components, including most major CPUs, GPUs, accelerators, interconnects, I/O systems, and power interfaces, as well as virtual cloud environments.

What is cyPAPI?

cyPAPI provides a convenient interface for Python programs to access PAPI profiling features with minimum overhead. It supports PAPI version >= 7.0.0.0

Installation

Currently cyPAPI supports installation from source. From the source root execute make install.

Install requires

• Cython
• C compiler
• PAPI library installed
  • First checks if user has set PAPI_PATH environment variable pointing to the location of PAPI installation
  • Then it checks if pkg-config utility can locate PAPI installation
  • Then it relies on C_INCLUDE_PATHS & LIBRARY_PATHS to be used by compiler
  • It also looks for papi library in LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  • Lastly it expects that PAPI is installed in default OS installation paths

Usage

from cypapi import *

PyPAPI_library_init()

eventset = PyPAPI_EventSet()

eventset.add_named_event('PAPI_TOT_CYC')
eventset.add_named_event('PAPI_TOT_INS')

eventset.start()

# Do some computation

values = eventset.stop()

print(values)