PAPI Contributions — macOS Features & Test Streamlining

Work at the Innovative Computing Laboratory (ICL) contributing features and testing flow improvements to PAPI, a performance‑monitoring toolkit used across HPC systems.

Context

Graduate Research Assistant at ICL (Aug 2024 – Present), Knoxville, TN.
Focus: macOS support & improving developer/test ergonomics.

Problem

macOS behavior differences and mixed hardware made default automation too aggressive for some users.
Test runs included inactive hardware, slowing iteration and muddying signal.

Role & Stack

Bash & C contributions to the PAPI codebase.
Test harness refinements for hardware‑aware selection.

Architecture

Key Decisions

Added opt‑out/disable flag for automatic features to increase user control.
Filtered tests to only active hardware → faster runs, clearer failures.

Impact & Metrics

Hardware-aware filtering sped up test runs and clarified failures.

Code Highlights

Small diffs or snippets that show flag parsing, hardware probes, or test filters (redact internal paths).

What I’d Do Next

Per‑device capability matrix + auto‑skips; CI matrix for macOS variants.