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Profiling#

Profiling Running Time#

Here is an example of how to run the callgrind tool of valgrind to profile the search component.

To set up, run the translator component:

./fast-downward.py --translate PROBLEM.PDDL

To profile, run the search component manually under valgrind (substitute the appropriate build and search options):

valgrind --tool=callgrind --callgrind-out-file=callgrind.out \
    --dump-instr=yes --collect-jumps=yes \
    ./builds/release/bin/downward --search "astar(blind())" < output.sas

To browse the profiling results:

# either this:
kcachegrind callgrind.out

# or this:
qcachegrind callgrind.out

See section "Installing QCacheGrind" below if you have neither KCacheGrind nor QCacheGrind installed.

Profiling Cache Misses#

Here is an example of how to run the cachegrind tool of valgrind to profile the CPU cache behaviour of the search component.

To set up, run the translator component:

./fast-downward.py --translate PROBLEM.PDDL

To profile, run the search component manually under valgrind (substitute the appropriate build and search options):

valgrind --tool=cachegrind --cachegrind-out-file=cachegrind.out \
    ./builds/release/bin/downward --search "astar(blind())" < output.sas

To browse the profiling results:

# either this:
kcachegrind cachegrind.out

# or this:
qcachegrind cachegrind.out

See section "Installing QCacheGrind" below if you have neither KCacheGrind nor QCacheGrind installed.

Profiling Memory Usage#

Here is an example of how to run the massif tool of valgrind to profile memory usage of the search component.

To set up, run the translator component:

./fast-downward.py --translate PROBLEM.PDDL

Note that massif only works for dynamically linked binaries. Recent versions of Fast Downward use dynamic linking by default.

./build.py release

To profile, run the search component manually under valgrind (substitute the appropriate search options):

valgrind --tool=massif --massif-out-file=massif.out \
    ./builds/release/bin/downward --search "astar(blind())" < output.sas

To browse the profiling results:

sudo apt install massif-visualizer
massif-visualizer massif.out

Profiling Python#

Here is an example of how to profile CPU usage of the translator with cprofile and snakeviz.

To create profile, run the translator under cprofile:

python -m cProfile -o translator.prof ./translate.py DOMAIN.PDDL PROBLEM.PDDL

To browse the profiling results:

pip install snakeviz
snakeviz translator.prof

Installing QCacheGrind#

QCacheGrind is KCacheGrind without the KDE bindings and is part of the same source archive as KCacheGrind. You may want to try it if you would rather not install all the KDE dependencies that KCacheGrind brings in.

To download and build QCacheGrind:

sudo apt-get install qt5-default graphviz
# Download December 2016 release. Alternatively, check
# https://github.com/KDE/kcachegrind/releases for something more recent.
wget https://github.com/KDE/kcachegrind/archive/v16.12.0.tar.gz
tar xvzf v16.12.0.tar.gz
cd kcachegrind-16.12.0
qmake && make -j4

Then copy the executable qcachegrind/qcachegrind to your preferred place, for example:

cp qcachegrind/qcachegrind ~/bin/

All other files can be deleted. Alternatively, for a system-wide install that includes metadata for the desktop:

sudo install -m 755 qcachegrind/qcachegrind /usr/local/bin/
sudo install -m 644 qcachegrind/qcachegrind.desktop \
     /usr/local/share/applications/
sudo install -m 644 kcachegrind/hi32-app-kcachegrind.png \
    /usr/local/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/kcachegrind.png
sudo install -m 644 kcachegrind/hi48-app-kcachegrind.png \
    /usr/local/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/kcachegrind.png