Aframeworkforperformanceanalysisofparallel discreteeventsimulatorsispresented.Thecenterpieceofthisframeworkisaplatform -independent WorkloadSpecificationLanguage(WSL).WSLisa languagethatallowsthecharacterizationofsimulationmodelsusingasetoffundamentalperformance - criticalparameters.WSLalsoimplementsafacility forrepresentingrealmodels.Foreachsimulatorto betested,aWSLtranslatorisusedtogeneratesyntheticplatform -specificsimulationmodelsthatconformtotheperformancecharacteristicscapturedby theWSLdescription.Accordingly,setsofportable simulationmodelsthatexplorethee#ectsofthedifferentparameters, individuallyorcollectively,onthe performancecanbeconstructed.Theconstruction oftheworkloadsimulationmodelsisassistedusing aSyntheticWorkloadGenerator(SWG).Theutility ofthesystemisdemonstratedwiththegenerationof arepresentativesetofexperiments.Thedescribed frameworkcanbeusedtocreateastandardbenchmarksuitethatconsistsofamixtureofrealsimu - lationmodels,selectedfromdi#erentapplicationdomains, andsyntheticmodelsgeneratedbySWG.

Performance evaluation of Parallel Discrete-Event Simulation (PDES) environments is a complex task. PDES environments are commonly tested and compared using synthetic and real models. These models are built using environment-specific languages and are incompatible with other simulation platforms. There is a need for a common benchmark suite that can be used across different simulation kernels. This thesis suggests a framework for building such a benchmark suite. The framework centers around a workload specification language (WSL) --- a language for capturing the performance-critical characteristics of a workload. Therefore, a set of performance-critical parameters for workloads are identified and used to define the language. In addition to allowing the representation of actual simulation models, WSL can be used to define synthetic simulation models. Moreover, WSL has been designed to facilitate translation of the model to any specific simulation environment or language. A synthetic wor...

Developing a parallel discrete-event simulation from scratch requires an indepth knowledge of the mapping process from the physical model to the simulation model, and a substantial effort in coping with numerous parallelism issues in the underlying synchronization protocols adopted. The lack of software tools and environments to reduce the development effort significantly is a major hindrance in adopting parallel simulation technology. This paper presents an overview of the SPADES (Structured Parallel Discrete-Event Simulation) scalable parallel simulation framework. We focus on the performance analysis of SPaDES/C**, an implementation of SPaDES on a distributed-memory Fujitsu AP3000 parallel computer. SPaDES/C.. hides the underlying complex parallel simulation synchronization and parallel programming details from the simulationist. We study various ways of improving SPADES execution performance including periodic checkpointing of simulation states, aggregation of messages for logical processes that reside on the same physical processors, and increasing the computational granularity of run-time processes to reduce the costs of synchronization and communication. Our empirical results show that the SPaDES framework can deliver good speedup for applications with large problem size and is scalable.

The development of efficient parallel discrete event simulators is hampered by the large number of interrelated factors affecting performance. This problem is made more difficult by the lack of scalable representative models that can be used to analyze optimizations and isolate bottlenecks. This paper proposes a performance and scalabilty analysis framework (PSAF) for parallel discrete event simulators. PSAF is built on a platform-independent workload specification language (WSL). WSL is a language that represents simulation models using a set of fundamental performance-critical parameters. For each simulator under study, a WSL translator generates synthetic platform-specific simulation models that conform to the performance and scalability characteristics specified by the WSL description. Moreover, sets of portable simulation models that explore the effects of the different parameters, individually or collectively, on the execution performance can easily be constructed using the synthetic workload generator (SWG). The SWG automatically generates simulation workloads with different performance properties. In addition, PSAF supports the seamless integration of real simulation models into the workload specification. Thus, a benchmark with both real and synthetically generated models can be built allowing for realistic and thorough exploration of the performance space. The utility of PSAF in determining the boundaries of performance and scalability of simulation environments and models is demonstrated.

A framework for performance analysis of parallel discrete event simulators is presented. The center-piece of this framework is a platform-independent Workload Specification Language (WSL). WSL is a language that allows the characterization of simula-tion models using a set of fundamental performance-critical parameters. WSL also implements a facility for representing real models. For each simulator to be tested, a WSL translator is used to generate syn-thetic platform-specific simulation models that con-form to the performance characteristics captured by the WSL description. Accordingly, sets of portable simulation models that explore the effects of the dif-ferent parameters, individually or collectively, on the performance can be constructed. The construction of the workload simulation models is assisted using a Synthetic Workload Generator (SWG). The utility of the system is demonstrated with the generation of a representative set of experiments. The described framework can be used to create a standard bench-mark suite that consists of a mixture of real simu-lation models, selected from different application do-mains, and synthetic models generated by SWG. 1

This document was prepared with L A T E X2. A British spelling checking program was used to check the spelling of this thesis. Copyright c 2000 by Mostapha al Mourabit, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Parallel simulation has the potential to accelerate the execution of simulation applications. However, developing a parallel discrete-event simulation from scratch requires an in-depth knowledge of the mapping process from the physical model to the simulation model, and a substantial effort in optimisingperformance. This paper presents an overview of the SPaDES (Structured Parallel Discrete-Event Simulation) parallel simulation framework. We focus on the performance analysis of SPaDES/C++, an implementation of SPaDES on a distributed-memory Fujitsu AP3000 parallel computer. SPaDES/C++ hides the underlying complex parallel simulation synchronization and parallel programming details from the simulationist. Our empirical results show that the SPaDES framework can deliver good speedup if the process granularity is properly optimised.