Process Groups
TotalView automatically places processes into groups. There are two kings of process groups-control and share. Here are quick definitions of these groups:
Control group
The executable that you invoked to start execution and all processes that this process started.
Share group
All processes within the control group that are executing the same file.
Much more precise definitions for these groups are contained within the "TotalView Users Guide."
The following diagram shows a quad-core chip, with each core shown as a white square. Notice the squiggly lines. These lines represent threads. This representation is indicating that every process is made up of threads. In this case, processes 1 through 3 each have 1 thread .
Here's what this diagram is telling you:
- If we assume that the program running in core 1 was the primary executable, it spawned at least one additional process.
- The process running on core 2 is identical to the process containing the executable on core 1. You can tell that they are identical because they are both in the same share group. While they are identical, this doesn't say anything about where the PC is located in either executable.
- The executable running on core 3 was launched either by the executable running on core1 or core 2---it doesn't matter which. However, this executable is different from that being run on the other two cores. You know this because it is a different share group.
- Nothing is executing on core 4.
To be continued ...
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