Automation support for software performance engineering
Hesham El‐Sayed, Don F. Cameron, Murray Woodside · 2001
To evaluate the performance of a software design one must create a model of the software, together with the execution platform and configuration. Assuming that the "platform": (processors, networks, and operating systems) are specified by the designer, a good "configuration" (the allocation of tasks to processors, priorities, and other aspects of the installation) must be determined. Finding one may be a barrier to rapid evaluation; it is a more serious barrier if there are many platforms to be considered. This paper describes an automated heuristic procedure for configuring a software system described by a layered architectural software model, onto a set of processors, and choosing priorities. The procedure attempts to meet a soft-real-time performance specification, in which any number of scenarios have deadlines which must be realized some percentage of the time. It has been successful in configuring large systems with both soft and hard deadlines.