Cache files

A very useful feature of Kernel Tuner is the ability to store benchmarking results in a cache file during tuning. You can enable cache files by passing any filename to the cache= optional argument of tune_kernel.

The benchmark results of individual kernel configurations are appended to the cache file as Kernel Tuner is running. This also allows Kernel Tuner to restart a tune_kernel() session from an existing cache file, should something have terminated the previous session before the run had completed. This happens quite often in HPC environments when a job reservation runs out.

Cache files enable a number of other features, such as simulations and visualizations. Simulations are useful for benchmarking optimization strategies. You can start a simulation by calling tune_kernel with a cache file that contains the full search space and the simulation=True option.

Cache files can be used to create visualizations of the search space. This even works while Kernel Tuner is still running. As the new results are coming, they are streamed to the visualization. Please see Kernel Tuner Dashboard.