Abstract

The CAPSE (Computer Aided Parallel Software Engineering) environment aims to assist a perfor-mance oriented parallel program development approach by integrating tools for performance prediction in the design phase, analytical or simulation based perfor-mance analysis in the detailed specification and coding phase, and finally monitoring in the testing and cor-rection phase. In this work, the N-MAP tool as part of the CAPSE environment is presented. N-MAP covers the crucial aspect of performance prediction to support a perfor-mance oriented, incremental development process of parallel applications such that implementation design choices can be investigated far ahead of the full coding of the application. Methodologically, N-MAP in an automatic parse and translate step generates a simu-lation program from a skeletal SPMD program, with which the programmer expresses just the constituent and performance critical program parts, subject to an incremental refinement. The simulated execution of the SPMD skeleton supports a variety of performance studies. We demonstrate the use and performance of the N-MAP tool by developing a linear system solver for the CM-5. 1

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