MultiSim: A Simulation Tool for the Study of Large-Scale Multiprocessors
Philip K. McKinley, Christian Trefftz · 1993
This paper describes a CSIM-based simulation tool, called MultiSim, which allows efficient simulation of large-scale multiprocessors. Methods are described for simulating several variations of wormhole routing, including multicast communication, the use of variable-sized buffers at routers within the network, and the use of virtual channels. The key to efficient simulation of such networks is that the simulation time of a message should be independent of its length. 1 Introduction Massively parallel computers with thousands of processors are considered the most promising technology to achieve teraflop computational power. Such large-scale multiprocessors are usually organized as ensembles of nodes, where each node has its own processor, local memory, and other supporting devices. The manner in which nodes are interconnected by communication channels defines the network topology. Because they do not physically share memory, nodes in such systems must communicate by passing messages t...