Large page analysis

The IBM® Large Page Analysis tool records runtime memory usage and generates a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) miss rate report.

The TLB miss rate report that is generated by the IBM Large Page Analysis tool can show you where using a larger page size might benefit application performance. The INTERPRETING REPORTS section of the lpa overview man page describes the significance of the information in the TLB miss rate report. You can use a larger page size with libhugetlbfs. For more information about libhugetlbfs, see libhugetlbfs.

The IBM Large Page Analysis tool is provided by the lpa package. The commands that are typically included are:

lpa_record

Run an application and record memory statistics by memory region. The recorded data is stored as a collection of trace files in the ~/.lpa_logs directory for later processing by the lpa_report command.

Memory regions include heap, stack, text, data, and bss (optional).

lpa_report

Compute the predicted cost in TLB miss rates from trace files that are created by the lpa_record command for various page size mappings. Page size mappings include 4K, 64K, 16M, and 16G. Run the lpa_record command before you run the lpa_report command.

The commands that are provided by this package, and their features and usage, might vary by distribution and release. Consult the man pages on your system for the most accurate description of their features and usage. For more information about how to list and display the man pages for commands that are provided by this package, see Displaying package man pages.