Intel Trace Analyzer & Collector - trace file format question

[samartha]

Hello,

I'd like to know which trace file formats are used and supported by the latest version of the Intel Trace Analyzer and Collector.




Thanks,
Samartha

[Gergana_S_Intel]

Hi Samartha,

There are basically 3 types of formats that the Intel Trace Analyzer and Collector can read:

• Structured Trace Format (STF, default) - .stf
• Single-file STF - .single.stf
• Old-style ASCII Vampir Format - .avt

More info is available in the Intel Trace Collector Reference Manual.

Regards,
~Gergana

[samartha]

Thanks for the info Gergana. I have a few more questions on the same topic.

Are the specs. of the Structured Trace Format (STF) available freely? Is STF a standardized format?
What are the other(non Intel) trace analysis/collect/view tools that support STF (if any) ?

Does the STF format stipulate any hard bound on scalability parameters such as the maximum number of MPI tasks that it can work with? If, yes - what is the upper bound on the maximum number of MPI tasks that it can work with?

Is STF XML based? Does it(stf) make any attempt to compress the MPI trace data? What is the maximum permitted size of an STF trace file?

In what aspects does the STF improve over the older formats?

Is there any Trace Analyzer and Collector specific binary file format (smaller size on disk) that it uses?

Are there any plans for the Trace Analyzer & Collector to support the Open Trace Format (OTF) in subsequent releases?



Thanks,
Samartha