Network computing performance evaluation in message passing environment

This paper is based on joint research between Queen Mary, University of London, and Wuhan University of Technology, People's Republic of China, on the use of network computing for solving non-linear heat flow problems. A general formulation for system performance evaluation has been derived from measured results, which covers the network computing as well as multiprocessor computing. The Amdahl's law and Gustafson's modification for speedup have been uniformly explained from this formula. Some criterions of speedup, efficiency and granularity for network computing also have been suggested.