Stanford Seminar - KUtrace

Explore a Stanford seminar on KUtrace 2020, a powerful observation tool for understanding performance issues in complex distributed systems. Dive into Dick Sites' presentation on February 5, 2020, where he discusses the challenges of analyzing occasionally-slow performance in large-scale distributed transaction systems, databases, real-time control systems, and operating systems. Learn about KUtrace's extremely low-overhead tracing capabilities, which reveal true execution and non-execution dynamics of software running with live traffic. Discover how small Linux kernel patches can record and timestamp transitions between kernel- and user-mode execution across all CPUs in datacenters or vehicle computers. Gain insights into how KUtrace displays exactly what each transaction is doing every nanosecond, helping identify why unpredictable ones are slow, all with tracing overhead under 1%. Examine recent additions to KUtrace that show interference between programs and profiles within long execution stretches without transitions. Understand how these deep insights into complex software dynamics can lead to simple yet effective performance improvements.