JetBench: An Open Source Real-time Multiprocessor Benchmark

Performance comparison among various architectures is generally attained by using standard benchmark tools. This paper presents JetBench, an Open Source OpenMP based multicore benchmark application that could be used to analyse real time performance of a specific target platform. The application is designed to be platform independent by avoiding target specific libraries and hardware counters and timers. JetBench uses jet engine parameters and thermodynamic equations presented in the NASA’s EngineSim program, and emulates a real-time jet engine performance calculator. The user is allowed to determine a flight profile with timing constraints, and adjust the number of threads. This paper discusses the structure of the application, thread distribution and its scalability on a custom symmetric multicore platform based on a cycle accurate full system simulator

An agent-based visualisation system.

This thesis explores the concepts of visual supercomputing, where complex distributed systems are used toward interactive visualisation of large datasets. Such complex systems inherently trigger management and optimisation problems; in recent years the concepts of autonomic computing have arisen to address those issues. Distributed visualisation systems are a very challenging area to apply autonomic computing ideas as such systems are both latency and compute sensitive, while most autonomic computing implementations usually concentrate on one or the other but not both concurrently. A major contribution of this thesis is to provide a case study demonstrating the application of autonomic computing concepts to a computation intensive, real-time distributed visualisation system. The first part of the thesis proposes the realisation of a layered multi-agent system to enable autonomic visualisation. The implementation of a generic multi-agent system providing reflective features is described. This architecture is then used to create a flexible distributed graphic pipeline, oriented toward real-time visualisation of volume datasets. Performance evaluation of the pipeline is presented. The second part of the thesis explores the reflective nature of the system and presents high level architectures based on software agents, or visualisation strategies, that take advantage of the flexibility of the system to provide generic features. Autonomic capabilities are presented, with fault recovery and automatic resource configuration. Performance evaluation, simulation and prediction of the system are presented, exploring different use cases and optimisation scenarios. A performance exploration tool, Delphe, is described, which uses real-time data of the system to let users explore its performance