A toolkit for optimising parallel performance

Dunlop, Alistair N.; Hernández, Emilio; Naím, Oscar; Hey, Tony; Nicole, Denis A.

doi:10.1007/bfb0046680

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The PERFORM [6] project recognized the importance of the memory hierarchy for accurate performance estimation and attempted to find a compromise between slow, instruction-level simulation of the node architecture and mere statement counting using an 'average' figure for each numerical operation. PERFORM introduced a novel 'fast simulation' method that relied on program slicing techniques to simulate the memory hierarchy only when necessary for accurate estimation.…”

Section: Performance Characterization Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of performance engineering techniques in the context of the Grid

Hey

Papay

Surridge³

2005

Concurrency and Computation

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SUMMARYPerformance engineering can be described as a collection of techniques and methodologies whose aim is to provide reliable prediction, measurement and validation of the performance of applications on a variety of computing platforms. This paper reviews techniques for performance estimation and performance engineering developed at the University of Southampton and presents application case studies in task scheduling for engineering meta-applications, and capacity engineering for a financial transaction processing system. These show that it is important to describe performance in terms of a resource model, and that the choice of models may have to trade accuracy for utility in addressing the operational issues. We then present work from the on-going EU funded Grid project GRIA, and show how lessons learned from the earlier work have been applied to support a viable business model for Grid service delivery to a specified quality of service level. The key in this case is to accept the limitations of performance estimation methods, and design business models that take these limitations into account rather than attempting to provide hard guarantees over performance. We conclude by identifying some of the key lessons learned in the course of our work over many years and suggest possible directions for future investigations. Copyright

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Section: Performance Characterization Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of performance engineering techniques in the context of the Grid

Hey

Papay

Surridge³

2005

Concurrency and Computation

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“…For existing codes a tool such as PERFORM [7] could be used to determine the complexity of the algorithm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Performance Estimator for Parallel Programs

Reeve

1999

Euro-Par’99 Parallel Processing

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In this paper we describe a Parallel Performance Estimator suitable for the comparative evaluation of parallel algorithms. The Estimator is designed for SPMD programs written in either C or FORTRAN. Simulation is used to produce estimates of execution times for varying numbers of processors and to analyse the communication overheads. Results from the estimator are compared with actual results (obtained on a 16 processor IBM SP2 machine) for an Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) solver of linear equations and for a Parallel Sort by Regular Sampling (PSRS) sorting program. In both cases the plots of Execution Time versus Number of Processors are accurate to 20% and show all of the features of the equivalent plots of the measured data.

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