To be at once robust and ubiquitous, TAU attempts to solve performance technology problems at levels where performance analysis system solutions can be configured and integrated to target specific performance problem solving needs. TAU has been developed based on the principle that performance technology should be open, easy to extend, and able to leverage external functionality. The complex system case studies presented here is but a small sample of the range of TAU's potential application [21].
In rapidly evolving parallel and distributed systems, performance technology can ill-afford to stand still. A performance technologist always operates under a set of constraints as well as under a set of expectations. While performance evaluation of a system is directly affected by what constraints the system imposes on performance instrumentation and measurement capabilities, the desire for performance problem solving tools that are common and portable, now and into the future, suggests that performance tools hardened and customized for a particular system platform will be short-lived, with limited utility. Similarly, performance tools designed for constrained parallel execution models will likely have little use to more general parallel and distributed computing paradigms. Unless performance technology evolves with system technology, a chasm will remain between the users expectations and the capabilities that performance tools provide. The challenge for the TAU system in the future is to maintain a highly configurable tool architecture while not arbitrarily enforcing constraining technology boundaries.