HP Performance Tuning Framework User Guide

The Splash Screen

The Performance Tuning Framework uses a splash screen (shown below) to convey its progress during startup processing.  The current area of system interrogation or interface construction is reported at the bottom of the window.

The Splash Screen

The Welcome Page

The Welcome Page image above shows the initial Framework interface presented after the startup processing completes.  The Welcome Page contains convenient hyperlinks that, when clicked, bring up relevant HP web sites in the system's default browser.  When the Framework is run on a workstation with no active network connections, these links will be disabled (grayed-out) to indicate that their destinations are currently unreachable.

The Configuration Page

The workstation's configuration is reported on the Configuration Page.  The types of information reported include:

• the hardware inventory
• the environment variables and their values
• the list of applications the Framework supports that it found installed on the workstation
• the list of graphics drivers available, and which applications have certified them

Many of the top-level categories can be expanded to disclose the lower levels of detail.  The image below shows an example of the Configuration Page.

Beyond the configuration data collected from the system and displayed on this page, access to other types of information may also be presented along the right-hand side of the screen, as shown in the Configuration Page image above.  If an internal chassis image is available for this model workstation, it can be displayed by clicking on the View button in the Look Inside box to the right of the configuration data (not shown in the image above).  More in-depth information about the parts and options of this workstation model is contained in the QuickSpecs document, which is also viewable from this Framework page.

The box in the lower-right corner of the Configuration Page contains machine-specific links to the HP support web site.  First, there is a link to the HP PartSurfer web site to help locate additional or replacement parts for the workstation.  This is followed by a link which will display the available drivers and software for the current workstation model and operating system combination.  This second link is helpful when the workstation's system BIOS or component drivers need to be updated.  Before downloading a new graphics driver from the HP site however, the application certification assistance provided on the Framework's Graphics Driver Page should be consulted; often the latest driver on the HP site is not the same version that was certified by the application providers.

One of the primary features of the HP Performance Tuning Framework is its ability to organize graphics driver certification information.  This organization allows a system administrator to compare potentially conflicting application requirements and make an informed decision about which driver to install.  In addition to the application certification results presented, the Framework can also provide driver release information direct from the HP workstation graphics lab that might help with the selection process.  All graphics drivers listed on this page are maintained on the Framework server, and can be downloaded over the network as needed.

The image below shows the Graphics Driver Page for a machine with several applications installed.  By default, the certification data for only the installed applications are reported in the list on this page.  By selecting the All Framework Apps radio button, the certification information for all Framework applications will be displayed, giving the user a more complete view of the certification status of the individual drivers.

Not all applications perform explicit certification of graphics drivers.  For example, the image below shows Adobe Photoshop CS2, and several other applications, in the top three driver boxes; these applications do not certify 3D graphics drivers, however PTF does recognize them as installed applications.  Hewlett-Packard recommends using one of the recently released graphics driver that has passed the Microsoft Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) driver functionality testing, and HP's own workstation graphics lab testing.  These applications for which exact drivers are not crucial will be listed with the three most-recently WHQL and HP certified drivers.

Another feature of the Framework is its recognition of more than one installed graphics card.  When there are multiple cards present in the system, the card name field on the Graphics Driver Page becomes a selection list from which the different cards can be chosen.  Driver selection data will be displayed for the card that is selected from the card list.

To determine the order in which the drivers should be presented, the Framework counts how many applications have been certified with each driver version.  The versions with the most certifications are listed first, and they are designated as such by the addition of the tag "Most Certifications" to their title.  There may be more than one driver that have the same number of certifications, which means there will be more than one driver that claim to have the most.  When confronted with this situation, administrators should compare the application lists of the drivers to decide which one to load based on the anticipated workload for the system.

The remaining drivers are then listed in decreasing order of the number of applications that have certified them.  In addition to the "Most Certifications" designation, two other labels may appear in the driver list.  "Latest Release" indicates that this driver is the latest one recognized by HP.  If the driver already in use on the machine appears in the list, it will be tagged as "Currently Installed."

By scrolling through the list, a system administrator can select the driver that satisfies the most application certification requirements, or a different driver altogether.  All drivers in the list can be downloaded and installed with the click of its corresponding button.

To the right of the driver status button is a button that controls the Resource Collector.  The button will either be labeled Configure, where it will launch the Resource Collector's configuration dialog, or Summarize, where it will produce a summary dialog showing the results from previous collections.  Completing the top row of the dashboard is a hyperlink to the Hewlett-Packard web page containing information specific to the application, if one exists.

If the application is running while the Framework's application tuning form is visible on the Windows desktop, a panel showing parameters of the executing process is added to the application's form.  The information is updated every five seconds.

In addition to the dashboard, the application forms provide access to application-specific tuning functionality.  For example, there are three application-specific tuning features shown on the UGS NX form shown above:  Run HyperTune for UGS NX, Run NX Log Analyzer, and Enable Large Memory.  As new tuning techniques arise for the supported applications, Hewlett-Packard will add new buttons to expose them.  For specific information about the tuning features associated with each supported application, refer to the appropriate section in Supported Applications.

The Memory Usage Page

When a Windows workstation runs low on available memory, the operating system's virtual memory mechanism can often free enough physical RAM to allow a workload to run to completion.  It is convenient to rely on this safety net when temporarily working with uncharacteristically large datasets, however as the memory requirements of an engineer's daily workload grows, this convenience comes at the price of lost productivity.  The virtual memory components of an operating system must take over the computer to reorganize the data stored in physical RAM.  During this time, a user application must wait until memory has been cleared before it can continue processing.

The Framework can help users understand how both physical and virtual memory resources are being used by the applications running on their workstations.  As shown in the image below, the Memory Usage Page contains a plot of memory usage over time.  The currently-executing programs are listed on the left; clicking on a program name in the list will assign a color and begin plotting that program's memory usage.  Applications that are supported by the Framework are automatically recognized and plotted, as was the case for Unigraphics (ugraf) and I-DEAS (geomod) below.

This image was taken on a machine with one gigabyte (1GB = 1,024MB) of system RAM.  The dark gray area at the bottom of the plot represents the amount of physical RAM being used by the Windows operating system, and the lighter gray area corresponds to all the applications that are not being individually highlighted.  The white space above the plotted processes shows how much RAM was available during the sampling periods.

A vertical time-division line is drawn for each fifth sample, and it is labeled with the minutes and seconds past the hour.  If the plot is stopped and restarted, a thicker time-division line is drawn to call attention to the break in the sampling sequence.  Each time-division line also corresponds to a refresh of the process list.  It is during these refreshes that the Framework will notice if any supported applications have been started since the previous refresh, as geomod was recognized to have started prior to the 51:42 sample.  The Refresh button can be used to force the Framework to recognize a newly-launched application; this could be desirable when using the longer sampling periods.

When the left mouse button is clicked within the plot, information describing the current memory region is displayed.  In the image above, the user clicked in the blue area of the plot that corresponds to the ugraf process.  Similar information is presented when the mouse cursor is stopped over a name (not clicked) in the process list on the left side of the page.

The plotted data can be switched to virtual memory using the Plot selection box above the process list.  The virtual memory usage of the currently selected processes will automatically be plotted for the existing samples.  The total virtual memory capacity shown is a combination of the system RAM and pagefile(s).

The current memory usage percentages are displayed below the process list, with a color-coded indication of the amount of free space.  Green indicates that the levels are good, while yellow means that free memory is diminished, and red connotes extremely low availability where paging activity may decrease application performance.  The Info button will display the current memory usage values, as well as advice on how to alleviate memory pressure if the system has exceeded the Framework's memory thresholds.

The HP Performance Tuning Framework provides a simple mechanism to implement processor affinity.  The Processor Affinity setting controls which CPUs the process will be allowed to execute on.  Using the Set Affinity command limits the execution of the program or process to the selected processors and might decrease overall performance.  By default, the Windows task scheduler will allow processes to run on all available processors.

The currently-executing programs are listed on the left; right clicking on a program name in the list will allow the user to Set Affinity on that running program.  In the case below, Autodesk Revit was the program selected by right clicking.  The dialog shows Revit running on a dual-processor workstation.  The user could select a single processor for the program to run on.  This state will stay in effect until changed by this Set Affintiy action or the program is re-started.