wattameter is a Python package for collecting and unifying heterogeneous hardware telemetry. It supports periodic collection of CPU and GPU metrics in a common time-series format and can be launched as part of an experiment script or from SLURM job scripts. This lowers friction for users who need to run repeated measurements across different machines and software versions.

The package emphasizes repeatability and operational simplicity:

• unbiased sampling intervals,
• configurable write frequency while guaranteeing a final write on shutdown,
• parity between Python API and CLI interfaces,
• optional real-time publication over MQTT, and
• shell utilities that integrate with SLURM jobs.

The resulting workflow reduces the overhead for experiment instrumentation and supports comparative studies across nodes, job configurations, and application versions.

Current Features

• Track power usage for CPU (using RAPL) and GPU (using nvidia-ml-py)
• Track GPU utilization and temperature
• Periodically log time series data to file
• Real-time MQTT publishing for integration with monitoring systems
• Customizable logging and output options
• Command-line interface for easy usage
• Integration with SLURM for HPC environments

Installation

You can install wattameter via pip:

pip install wattameter

Optional extras

Some features are optional and not required for the core runtime. The current optional dependencies are post-processing (postprocessing) and benchmark (benchmark) utilities, and MQTT (mqtt) publishing. Here are a few examples of how to install with optional dependencies:

# Install with post-processing utilities
pip install wattameter[postprocessing]

# Install with benchmark utilities
pip install wattameter[benchmark]

# Install with postprocessing and mqtt
pip install wattameter[postprocessing,mqtt]

Usage

As a Python module

from wattameter import Tracker
from wattameter.readers import NVMLReader

tracker = Tracker(
    reader=NVMLReader((Power,)),
    dt_read=0.1,  # Time interval for reading power data (seconds)
    freq_write=600,  # Frequency (# reads) for writing power data to file
    output="power_log.txt",
)
tracker.start()
# ... your code ...
tracker.stop()

# ... or ...

with Tracker(
    reader=NVMLReader((Power,)),
    dt_read=0.1,
    freq_write=600,
    output="power_log.txt",
) as tracker:
    # ... your code ...

Command-line interface

wattameter --tracker 0.1,nvml-power,rapl --tracker 1.0,nvml-util --suffix test --id 0 --freq-write 600 --log-level info

For MQTT publishing, add MQTT broker configuration:

wattameter \
  --tracker 0.1,nvml-power,rapl \
  --mqtt-broker mqtt.example.com \
  --mqtt-port 1883 \
  --mqtt-username myuser \
  --mqtt-password mypassword \
  --mqtt-topic-prefix "hpc/wattameter"

See MQTT Usage Documentation for detailed information on MQTT publishing.

Option	Short	Default	Description
--tracker		0.1,nvml-power,rapl	Tracker specification: dt_read,metric1,metric2,... where dt_read is the time interval in seconds between readings. Available metrics: rapl (CPU energy), nvml-energy (GPU energy), nvml-power (GPU power), nvml-temp (GPU temperature), nvml-util (GPU utilization), nvml-nvlink (GPU NVLink throughput). Can be specified multiple times to create multiple trackers with different configurations.
--suffix	-s	None	Suffix for output files
--id	-i	UUID	Identifier for the experiment
--freq-write	-f	3600	Frequency (# reads) for writing data to file
--log-level	-l	warning	Logging level: debug, info, warning, error, critical
--mqtt-broker		None	MQTT broker hostname. If provided, enables real-time publishing to MQTT
--mqtt-port		1883	MQTT broker port
--mqtt-username		None	MQTT authentication username (optional)
--mqtt-password		None	MQTT authentication password (optional)
--mqtt-topic-prefix		wattameter	Prefix for MQTT topics
--mqtt-qos		1	MQTT Quality of Service level (0, 1, or 2)
--help	-h		Show the help message and exit

Command-line interface with SLURM

For usage within SLURM jobs, we recommend using our utility functions start_wattameter and stop_wattameter in slurm.sh. Follow the example examples/slurm.sh, i.e.,

# In a Python environment with wattameter installed,
# load wattameter slurm utilities
WATTAPATH=$(python -c 'import wattameter; import os; print(os.path.dirname(wattameter.__file__))')
source "${WATTAPATH}/utils/slurm.sh"

# Run wattameter on all nodes
start_wattameter

# Input your job commands here
# ...

# Stop wattameter on all nodes
stop_wattameter

All options are the same as the regular command-line interface. The script will automatically handle the output file naming based on the provided SLURM_JOB_ID and node information.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open issues or submit pull requests at https://github.com/NatLabRockies/WattAMeter/.

Documentation

The API documentation is available at https://NatLabRockies.github.io/WattAMeter/. For specific documentation of the NLR module, visit https://natlabrockies.github.io/HPC/Documentation/Development/Performance_Tools/WattAMeter/.

License

See the LICENSE file for details.

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NLR Software Record number: SWR-25-101