A generic object-oriented simulation platform is developed in order to conduct
experiments on the performance of assignment schemes. The simulation platform,
called Genesis, is generic in the sense that it can model the key parameters that
describe a parallel system: the architecture, the program, the assignment scheme
and the message routing strategy. Genesis uses as its basis a sound architectural
representation scheme developed in the thesis.
The thesis reports results from a number of experiments assessing the performance
of assignment schemes using Genesis. The comparison results indicate that the
new assignment scheme proposed in this thesis is a promising alternative to the
work-greedy assignment schemes. The proposed scheme has a time-complexity
less than those of the work-greedy schemes and achieves an average performance
better than, or comparable to, those of the work-greedy schemes.
To generate an assignment, some parameters describing the program model will
be required. In many cases, accurate estimation of these parameters is hard. It is
thought that inaccuracies in the estimation would lead to poor assignments. The
thesis investigates this speculation and presents experimental evidence that shows
such inaccuracies do not greatly affect the quality of the assignments
