Implementation Lessons of Performance Prediction Tool for Parallel Conservative Simulation

Performance prediction is useful in helping parallel programmers answer questions such as speedup scalability. Performance prediction for parallel simulation requires first working out the performance analyzer algorithms for specific simulation protocols. In order for the prediction results to be close to the results from actual parallel executions, there are further considerations when implementing the analyzer. These include (a) equivalence of code between the sequential program and parallel program, and (b) system effects (e.g. cache miss rates and synchronization overheads in an actual parallel execution). This paper describes our investigations into these issues on a performance analyzer for a conservative, “super-step” (synchronous) simulation protocol.