Getting Started

Contech consists of two main components: instrumentation and analysis. The instrumentation side relies on LLVM to compile programs that will generate task graphs for later analysis. The analysis components can use any C++11 enabled compiler (e.g. gcc 4.7 or later).

See Getting Started Instrumentation for details about building the the instrumentation.

After checking out the git repository for Contech, you should build Contech's tools and libraries using the provided Makefile. Contech requires zlib to be installed in order to read and write task graph files. Some backends that generate images depend on the GraphViz library - http://www.graphviz.org/. The scripts in Contech are written in Python using version 2.7.6. Some of the backends also have graphing scripts that use the python library, matplotlib.

Several environment variables are used by parts of the Contech framework:

• CONTECH_HOME - Root of Contech repository
• PARSEC_HOME - Directory where the Parsec benchmark is located, required for build_parsec and run_parsec scripts
• NAS_HOME - Directory where the NAS benchmark is located, required for build_nas and run_nas scripts

Most testing and usage of the Contech framework has been confined to 64-bit x86 C / C++ programs.