A Performance Model of Composite Synchronization

Abstract

Experience and intuition indicate that both synchronization and the mapping of workload to processors has significant impact on overall performance. However, the behavior of parallel simulations is quite complex, and the inter-relationships between workload mapping and the synchronization overheads need mathematical explanation. This paper develops a performance model of a parallel simulation that is synchronized using composite synchronization. We use this model to help explain how mapping decisions and a synchronization tuning parameter impacts synchronization overhead, and hence performance. The observations we make should inform designers of algorithms to map conservatively synchronized parallel simulations to the available computing platform.