ProcSimity: an experimental tool for processor allocation and scheduling in highly parallel systems

Abstract

ProcSimity is a software tool that supports research in processor allocation and scheduling for highly parallel systems. ProcSimity's multicomputer simulator supports experimentation with selected allocation and scheduling algorithms on architectures with a range of network topologies and for several current routing and flow control mechanisms. Message-passing can be simulated in detail at the flit level or at a higher level of modeling. Our tool supports both stochastic job streams as well as communication patterns from actual parallel applications, including several of the NAS parallel benchmarks. ProcSimity's visualisation and performance analysis tool allows the user to view a dynamic animation of the selected algorithms as well as a variety of system and job level performance metrics. ProcSimity has been successfully used in experiments investigating the feasibility of non-contiguous processor allocation in meshes and k-ary n-cubes.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>