Performance modeling of the IDES framework

Abstract

The IDES project at Sandia National Laboratories is developing a large scale portable parallel simulator for use in stockpile stewardship. IDES will use the Breathing-Time-Buckets synchronization protocol; to support IDES development, this paper studies a performance model and describes performance experiments on expected work load and architectural parameters. A new parallel algorithm for terminating the window quickly is also described and analyzed.

CSA&S/PV: Parallel Framework for Complex Systems Simulation

“…Thus, in the (5) approach all sources receive, at a given time instant k, prices λ l (k), compute respective source prices λ s (k) and calculate optimal source rateŝ x s (k) solving LPs problems. The obtained values of the source ratesx s (k) are then send to the links and the new link prices λ l (k + 1) are computed according to (5).…”

“…These software tools apply different techniques for synchronization and memory management, and focus on different aspects of distributed implementation. Many of them are built in Java, [5]. SimJava was among the first publically released simulators written in Java.…”

The IDES framework

“…We thought it prudent, prior to building IDES, to anticipate some of the performance considerations, by first building an analytic model of IDES and study its behavior. We have already reported on that work by Nicol, Johnson, Yoshimura, and Goldsby (1997), we only sketch the approach and results here. The model recognizes that the key elements governing a sub-model's behavior with respect to synchronization are (1) its time of next event, and (2) its minimum known receive time on generated messages.…”