An Environment for the Design and Performance Evaluation of Portable Parallel Software - Final EDPEPPS Simulator

This report presents the performance modelling and the validation of the final simulator. The report overlaps with the prototype simulator report and updates only relevant parts changed since the prototype version of the simulator. The main changes are discussed in Chapter 5. The other chapters are left with little or no change at all for the sake of completeness. For the purpose of performance modelling, exhaustive experimentation on the target system had to be done in order to establish correct timing and other parameters. The layers of the simulation platform have been modelled. The Hardware Layer has been studied first, then the operating system layer, then the message passing layer and finally the Application layer. The parts of the model dealing with communications, that is to say Ethernet, TCP/UDP and PVM protocols have been successively modelled. Let us recall that the communications between the PVM daemons and its local PVM tasks are performed in connected mode, i.e. TCP protocol whereas the communications between daemons, which are the nodes of the virtual machine, are in non-connected UDP mode. That's why exhaustive UDP experiments above Ethernet between workstations have been carried out. Ethernet has been modelled using the IEEE 802.3 standard specifications and validated with results from published papers. The performance modelling of the UDP part has been realised by establishing parameters using a measurement program of UDP performances. For the PVM part, two programs of the GENESIS benchmark suite developed at the University of Southampton presented in [2] and [3] have been used. All the experiments have been realised on a heterogeneous network connected to a 10 Mbits/second Ethernet network. Indeed, the aim of PVM is to work on such a network as well..

EDPEPPS: An Environment for the Design and Performance Evaluation of Portable Parallel Software

. This paper describes an environment for performance-oriented design of portable parallel software. The environment consists of a graphical design tool based on the PVM communication library for building parallel algorithms, a state-of-the-art simulation engine and a visualisation tool for animation of program execution and visualisation of platform and network performance measures and statistics. The toolset is used to model a virtual machine composed of a cluster of workstations interconnected by a local area network. The simulation model used is modular and its components are interchangeable which allows easy re-configuration of the platform. The model is validated using experiments on the COMMS1 benchmark from the Parkbench suite, and a standard image processing algorithm with maximum errors of 1% and 10% respectively. 1 Introduction A major obstacle to the widespread adoption of parallel computing in industry is the difficulty in program development due mainly to lack of parall..

EDPEPPS: a graphical environment for the parallel software development cycle

This paper describes an environment for performance-oriented design of portable parallel software. The environment consists of a graphical design tool for building parallel algorithms, a state-of-the-art simulation engine, a CPU characterisation tool, a distributed debugging tool and a visualisation/replay tool. The environment is used to model a virtual machine composed of a cluster of heterogeneous high-performance workstations interconnected by a local area network. The simulation model used is modular and its components are interchangeable which allows easy re-configuration of the platform. The model is validated using experiments on two parallel Givens linear solver algorithms with average errors of about 8%

Accurate performance prediction using visual prototypes

Behavioural and performance analysis is a fundamental problem in the development of parallel (and distributed) programs. To address this problem, models and supporting environments are required to enable designers to build and analyse their programs. The model we put forward in this paper combines graphical and textual representations of the program structure and uses discrete-event simulation for performance and behaviour predictions. A graphical environment supports our model, providing, amongst other features, a graphical editor, a simulation engine and a performance and behaviour visualisation tool. A number of case studies using this environment are also provided for illustration and validation of our model. Prediction errors observed in comparisons of real execution and simulation of case studies have accuracy to within 10%

An Environment for the Design and Performance Evaluation of Portable Parallel Software - Literature Review (2)

ion language is used MP = Mapping An = Animation MO = Monitoring AN = Analytical modelling MPI = MPI library C = C Language PP = Parallel Profiling CG = Code Generation PVM = PVM library D = Dynamic S = Static DB = Debugging code or through animation SI = Simulation F = F77 Language St = Statistics GD = Graphical Design ST = Separate tools IE = Integrated Environment T/E = Tool/Environment Name LB = Load Balancing Vis = Visualisation Lang Comm Model MO AB Vis GD CG DB IE ST MP LB PP T/E N C F PVM MPI AN SI St An D S AIMS X X X X X X X X X X ALPSTONE X X X X X X X X ANNAI X X X X X X X X X X X X X CAMAS X X X X X X X X X X CAPSE X X X X X X X X X X Carnival X X X X X X Dip X X X X X X X X X X X GRADE X X X X X X X X X X X X X X Hamlet X X X X X X X X X HeNCE X X X X X X X X X X MAD X X X X X X X X X X Mermaid X X X X X X X X X X X MPSS X X X X X X X X PADE X X X X X X X X PARADE X X X X X X X X X X Paradyn X X X X X X X PEPS X X X X X X X X X X X Ptolemy X X X X X X X ..

Prototype-oriented development of high-performance systems

We discuss the problem of developing performance-oriented software and the need for methodologies. We then present the EDPEPPS (Environment for Design and Performance Evaluation of Portable Parallel Software) approach to the problem of designing and evaluating high-performance (parallel) applications. The EDPEPPS toolset is based on a rapid prototyping philosophy, where the designer synthesises a model of the intended software which may be simulated, and the performance is subsequently analysed using visualisation. The toolset combines a graphical design tool, a simulation facility, and a visualisation tool. The same design is used to produce a code suitable for simulation and real execution

EDPEPPS: an integrated environment for the parallel development life-cycle

This paper describes an environment for performance-oriented design of portable parallel software. The environment consists of a graphical design tool for building parallel algorithms, a state-of-the-art simulation engine, a CPU characterisation tool, a distributed debugging tool and a visualisation/replay tool. The environment is used to model a virtual machine composed of a cluster of heterogeneous workstations interconnected by a local area network. The simulation model used is modular and its components are interchangeable which allows easy re-configuration of the platform. The model is validated using experiments on two parallel Givens linear solver algorithms with average errors of about 8%