Analyzing the behavior and performance of parallel programs
Vikram Adve · 1993
An analytical performance model for parallel programs can provide qualitative insight as well as efficient quantitative evaluation and prediction of parallel program performance. While stochastic models for parallel programs can represent execution time variance due to communication and resource contention delays, a qualitative assessment of previous models shows that the stochastic assumption makes it extremely difficult to compute synchronization costs and overall execution times. This thesis first re-evaluates the need for the stochastic assumption by examining the influence of non-deterministic communication and resource contention delays on execution times in parallel programs. An analytical model of program behavior, combined with detailed program measurements, provides compelling evidence that in shared-memory programs on current systems as well as programs with similar granularity on foreseeable future systems, such delays introduce extremely low variance into the execution tim...