Performance analysis of distributed applications by suitability functions

Abstract

A simple programming model of distributed-memory message-passing computer systems is first applied to describe the couple architecture/application by two sets of parameters. The node timing formula is then derived on the basis of scalar, vector and communication components. A set of suitability functions, extracted from the performance formulae, are defined. These functions are applied as an example to the performance analysis of the 1-dimensional FFT benchmark from the GENESIS benchmark suite. The suitability functions could also be useful for comparative performance analysis of both existing distributed-memory systems and new architectures under development.<>