From: mohr@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Bernd Mohr)
Newsgroups: comp.doc.techreports
Subject: TR-List: Measurement+Modeling Parallel Systems, University of Erlangen
Date: 29 Jul 92 09:23:45 GMT
Organization: Student Pool, CSD, University of Erlangen, Germany
NNTP-Posting-Host: midgard.ucsc.edu
Originator: golding@midgard

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*  UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN                                               *
*  Institute for Mathematical Machines and Data Processing (IMMD7)      *
*  Group for Measurement, Modeling and Evaluation                       *
*  of Parallel and Distributed Systems (MMB)                            *
*  D-8520 Erlangen                                                      *
*  GERMANY                                                              *
*                                                                       *
*  DOCUMENTS FTP ACCESS                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     host: faui79.informatik.uni-erlangen.de [131.188.47.79]
directory: ~ftp/pub/doc

In case of any problem or question feel free to send a mail to:

  mohr@immd7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de

This directory contains documentation files in PostScript
format (compressed) about the ZM4, SIMPLE, and PEPP environment.
The entries are described in the following format:

  Filename (number of pages)
       "Title"
       Author(s)
       Reference
       Abstract

The email addresses of the authors:

  Peter Dauphin        pdauphin@immd7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
  Franz Soetz             franz@immd7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
  Richard Hofmann      rhofmann@immd7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
  Rainer Klar              klar@immd7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
  Bernd Mohr               mohr@immd7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
  Andreas Quick           quick@immd7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
  Markus Siegle          siegle@immd7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de

**************
*  ARTICLES  *
**************

conpar90.si.ps.Z (12 pages)
        "Performance Evaluation of Parallel Programs
         in Parallel and Distributed Systems"
        B. Mohr
        In H. Burkhart, editor, CONPAR 90-VAPP IV,
        Joint International Conf. on Vector and Parallel Processing.
        Proceedings, pages 176-187, Zurich, Switzerland, September
        1990. Springer, Berlin, LNCS 457.

        This paper deals with performance evaluation of parallel
        and distributed systems based on monitoring of concurrent
        interdependent activities. First a model is introduced
        for describing the dynamic behavior of computer systems
        in terms of events. Then, a distributed hardware/hybrid
        monitor system based on event driven monitoring and
        its tool environment SIMPLE are presented. We emphasize
        the tool environment as a prerequisite for successful
        performance evaluation. The tool environment for evaluating
        event traces, which integrates the data access interface
        TDL/POET and a set of evaluation tools for processing
        the data, makes evaluation independent of the monitor
        device(s) and the object system. It provides a problem
        oriented way of accessing event traces. 

conpar90.pp.ps.Z (10 pages)
        "A Method for Performance Prediction of Parallel Programs"
        F. Soetz
        In H. Burkhart, editor, CONPAR 90-VAPP IV,
        Joint International Conf. on Vector and Parallel Processing.
        Proceedings, pages 98-107, Zurich, Switzerland, September
        1990. Springer, Berlin, LNCS 457.

        In general there are many possibilities to parallelize an
        algorithm and to distribute the tasks to the processors. In
        some cases the selection of a processor configuration depends
        on the given problem, too. To decide which implementation for
        any configuration may be the best, the programmer can use
        methods of performance evaluation and prediction. If the
        structure of the parallel program can be modeled by a seriesparallel
        graph we know a method to obtain the runtime of the total program.
        This paper deals with the more difficult problem of predicting
        the runtimes of non-seriesparallel structured programs. It is shown
        how to compute approximately the average runtime of a program which
        consists of tasks with deterministically and/or exponentially
        distributed runtime variables. The method is based on the well known
        transient state space analysis.

dagstuhl.ps.Z (28 pages)
        "Integrating Monitoring and Modeling to a
         Performance Evaluation Methodology"
        R. Hofmann, R. Klar, N. Luttenberger, B. Mohr, A. Quick, and F. Soetz
        In T. Haerder, H. Wedekind, and G. Zimmermann,
        editors, Entwurf und Betrieb verteilter Systeme, pages
        122-149. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, IFB 264, 1990.

        This paper presents a comprehensive methodology for
        monitoring and modeling parallel and distributed systems
        systematically. The integration of models, measurements,
        and evaluators to an efficient set of performance evaluation
        tools is described. Three typical tools are presented.
        One of them is the distributed hardware and hybrid
        monitor ZM4, another is the monitor independent and
        source related event trace interface POET/TDL. Both
        were developed at the Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg.
        As a modeling tool stochastic Petri-nets have been
        used. These tools have been used for analyzing the
        performance of multiprocessor and multicomputer systems.
        Here, they are applied in a case study for performance
        analysis and improvement of a communication subsystem
        prototype for B(roadband)-ISDN that was developed by
        IBM's European Networking Center. The measurement results
        give some interesting hints concerning the prototype's
        architecture which helped to improve the communication
        subsystem. Measuring the existing communication subsystem
        was accompanied by models for predicting the performance
        of modified ones.

edinburgh.ps.Z (19 pages)
        "Model-driven Validation of Parallel Programs Based on Event Traces"
        P. Dauphin, M. Kienow, and A. Quick
        In Proc. of Conf. on Programming Environments for Parallel
        Computing, Edinburgh, April 1992.

        In order to program parallel and distributed systems
        efficiently, a systematic way of defining and understanding
        the complex behavior of process interactions in concurrent
        programs is needed. A proved method for understanding
        existing programs is model-driven monitoring which
        abstracts the program behavior to a sequence of events.
        These event traces are analyzed for debugging and tuning
        the program. However, model and program are not always
        consistent. The goal of this paper is using measured
        event traces to validate the consistency between model
        and program.
        We have investigated a solution to validate model-program
        consistency automatically: by building a functional
        model of the parallel program describing all properties
        for debugging and performance evaluation the definition
        of monitoring events is automated and carried out systematically.
        This integration of modeling and monitoring guarantees
        the same set of events in monitoring and modeling.
        It enables us to validate the program behavior in an automatic
        and systematic way by checking the event trace against the behavior
        represented in the model.
        In order to implement validation for different modeling
        methods only once we analyzed three different methods
        for a model-type-independent representation of parallel
        programs. The analysis showed that a model of a real-world
        application is too complicated to be described in a
        model-type-independent way. Therefore validation was
        implemented for two modeling tools: PEPP for modeling
        with graph models and GreatSPN for modeling with Petri
        nets. Both tools were extended to enable automatic
        program validation.

edmcc2.si.ps.Z (10 pages)
        "SIMPLE: a Performance Evaluation Tool Environment
         for Parallel and Distributed Systems"
        B. Mohr
        In A. Bode, editor, Proc. of the 2nd European Distributed
        Memory Computing Conference, EDMCC2, pages 80-89, Munich,
        Germany, April 1991. Springer, Berlin, LNCS 487.

        This paper describes SIMPLE: a performance evaluation
        tool environment for parallel and distributed systems
        based on monitoring of concurrent interdependent activities.
        We emphasize the tool environment as a prerequisite
        for successful performance evaluation. All tools use
        the data access interface TDL/POET which can decode
        measured data of arbitrary structure, format and representation.
        This makes the evaluation independent of the monitor
        device(s) used and the system monitored. It also provides
        a problem-oriented way of accessing the data. Therefore
        it is very easy to adapt SIMPLE to any kind of measured
        data and to understand the evaluation results. 

edmcc2.tr.ps.Z (10 pages)
        "Monitor-Supported Analysis of a Communication
         System for Transputer-Networks"
        C.-W. Oehlrich, A. Quick, and P. Metzger
        In A. Bode, editor, Proc. of the 2nd European Distributed
        Memory Computer Conference, EDMCC2, pages 120-129, Munich,
        Germany, April 1991. Springer, Berlin, LNCS 487.

        Most parallel applications in a Transputer-network
        require a lot of communication between the processing
        nodes. For such applications the communication system
        TRACOS was developed to support data transfer between
        arbitrary Transputers in the network. To maximize the
        performance of the parallel system its dynamic internal
        behavior has to be analyzed. For this purpose event-driven
        monitoring is an appropriate technique. It reduces
        the dynamic behavior of the system to some important
        events, which are recorded by a monitor system and
        stored in event traces. In this paper the architecture
        of the communication system TRACOS and its analysis
        are presented. For the analysis a synthetic workload
        was instrumented and monitored with the distributed
        hardware monitor ZM4.

ieee.ps.Z (26 pages)
        "ZM4/SIMPLE: a General Approach to Performance-Measurement
         and -Evaluation of Distributed Systems"
        P. Dauphin, R. Hofmann, R. Klar, B. Mohr, A. Quick, M. Siegle,
        and F. Soetz
        In T.L. Casavant and M. Singhal, editors, Advances in Distributed
        Computing: Concepts and Design. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1992.

        The performance of parallel and distributed systems
        is highly dependent on the degree of parallelism and
        the efficiency of their communication systems. Both,
        efficiently parallelizing big jobs and successfully
        designing high-speed communication systems, need insight
        into the dynamic behavior of at least two computers
        at a time. Getting insight is usually needed in debugging,
        here it is a means for improving performance.
        First, we present a comprehensive methodology for monitoring
        and modeling programs in parallel and distributed systems.
        In using event-driven monitoring and event-oriented
        models there is a common abstraction, the event, which
        enables us to integrate both approaches.
        A second part describes implementation concepts in
        hardware and software which render the methodology
        generally applicable and fruitful for practical performance
        evaluation problems. The hardware monitor ZM4 uses
        many distributed monitor agents and a global clock
        mechanism for achieving generality, and the evaluation
        environment SIMPLE uses new trace description and access
        principles which allow for accessing arbitrarily formatted
        traces, thus making standardized formats in the measured
        event traces superfluous.

ieee.pads.ps.Z (23 pages)
        "Distributed Performance Monitoring:
         Methods, Tools, and Applications"
        R. Hofmann, R. Klar, B. Mohr, A. Quick, and M. Siegle
        Submitted to: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and
        Distributed Systems, 1992.

        A method for analyzing the functional behavior and
        the performance of programs in distributed systems
        is presented. We use hybrid monitoring, a technique
        which combines advantages of both software monitoring
        and hardware monitoring. It is shown that monitoring
        and modeling both rely on a common abstraction of a
        system's dynamic behavior, and therefore can be integrated
        to one comprehensive methodology. This methodology
        is supported by a set of tools for modeling, monitoring,
        and measurement evaluation. Here we describe a hardware
        monitor and a software package (ZM4/SIMPLE) which make
        our concepts available to programmers, assisting them
        in debugging and tuning of their code. A short survey
        of related monitor systems highlights the distinguishing
        features of our implementation. As an application of
        our monitoring and evaluation system, the analysis
        of a parallel ray tracing program running on the SUPRENUM
        multiprocessor is described. We show how monitoring
        helped to increase the performance of a parallel program
        dramatically.

isca91.ps.Z (10 pages)
        "Performance Evaluation of a Communication System for
         Transputer-Networks Based on Monitored Event Traces"
        C.-W. Oehlrich and A. Quick
        ACM SIGARCH, 19(3):202-211, May 1991. Proc. of the
        18th Int. Symp. on Computer Architecture, Toronto, May 27-30, 1991.

        Most parallel applications (e.g.image processing, multigrid
        algorithms) in a Transputer-network require a lot of
        communication between the processing nodes. For such
        applications the communication system TRACOS was developed
        to support data transfer between random Transputers
        in the network. To maximize the performance of the
        parallel system, its dynamic internal behavior has
        to be analyzed. For this purpose event-driven monitoring
        is an appropriate technique. It reduces the dynamic
        behavior of the system to sequences of events. They
        are recorded by a monitor system and stored as event
        traces. In this paper the communication system TRACOS
        and its performance evaluation based on monitored event
        traces are presented. First a synthetic workload was
        instrumented and monitored with the distributed hardware
        monitor ZM4. The results showed that the performance
        of TRACOS is poor for packets smaller than 4Kbyte.
        Therefore, TRACOS itself was instrumented and monitored
        to get insight into the interactions and interdependencies
        of all TRACOS processes. Based on the monitoring results,
        TRACOS could be improved which led to a performance
        increase of 25%.

isca92.ps.Z (10 pages)
        "Monitoring Program Behaviour on SUPRENUM"
        M. Siegle and R. Hofmann
        ACM SIGARCH, 20(?):???, May 1992, Proc. of the 19th Int. Symp. on
        Computer Architecture, Queensland, May 19-21, 1992.

        It is often very difficult for programmers of parallel
        computers to understand how their parallel programs
        behave at execution time, because there is not enough
        insight into the interactions between concurrent activities
        in the parallel machine. Programmers do not only wish
        to obtain statistical information that can be supplied
        by profiling, for example. They need to have detailed
        knowledge about the functional behaviour of their programs.
        Considering performance aspects, they need timing information
        as well. Monitoring is a technique well suited to obtain
        information about both functional behaviour and timing.
        Global time information is essential for determining
        the chronological order of events on different nodes
        of a multiprocessor or of a distributed system, and for
        determining the duration of time intervals between events from
        different nodes. A major problem on multiprocessors is the absence
        of a global clock with high resolution. This problem can be overcome
        if a monitor system capable of supplying globally valid time
        stamps is used.
        In this paper, the behaviour and performance of a parallel
        program on the SUPRENUM multiprocessor is studied.
        The method used for gaining insight into the runtime
        behaviour of a parallel program is hybrid monitoring,
        a technique that combines advantages of both software
        monitoring and hardware monitoring. A novel interface
        makes it possible to measure program activities on
        SUPRENUM. The SUPRENUM system and the ZM4 hardware
        monitor are briefly described. The example program
        under study is a parallel ray tracer. We show that
        hybrid monitoring is an excellent method to provide
        programmers with valuable information for debugging
        and tuning of parallel programs.

turin.ps.Z (15 pages)
        "Tools for a Model-driven Instrumentation for Monitoring"
        R. Klar, A. Quick, and F. Soetz
        In G. Balbo, editor, Proc. of the 5th Int. Conf. on Modelling
        Techniques and Tools for Computer Performance Evaluation,
        Torino, Italy, pages 165-180. Elsevier Science Publisher B.V., 1992.

        The performance of parallel and distributed systems
        depends significantly on how the programs' execution
        is dynamically organized. Therefore, performance evaluation
        and efficient programming of parallel and distributed
        systems need the analysis of the internal behavior
        of such systems. For this purpose event-driven monitoring
        is an appropriate technique. Event-driven monitoring
        reduces the dynamic internal behavior of the system
        to some important events, which are recorded in event
        traces. The instrumentation of the object program,
        i.e.the definition of events, depends on the respective
        intention of the analysis. In most cases the instrumentation
        will be done intuitively based on professional experience.
        In this paper a concept for a model-driven execution
        of event-driven monitoring is presented. It leads to
        tools for systematic and automatic instrumentation.

***********************
*  Reference manuals  *
***********************

simple.ps.Z (20 pages)
        SIMPLE User's Guide - Version 5.3
        SIMPLE Tutorial
        Technical Report no. ??/92

tdl.ref.ps.Z (69 pages)
        SIMPLE User's Guide - Version 5.3
        Part A: TDL reference guide              
        Technical Report no. 3a/92

poet.ref.ps.Z (55 pages)
        SIMPLE User's Guide - Version 5.3
        Part B: POET reference manual            
        Technical Report no. 3b/92

tools.ps.Z (86 pages)
        SIMPLE User's Guide - Version 5.3
        Part C: Tools reference manual    
        Technical Report no. 3c/92

var-fil.ref.ps.Z (57 pages)
        SIMPLE User's Guide - Version 5.3
        Part D: FDL/VARUS reference guide        
        Technical Report no. 3d/92

pepp.ps.Z (54 pages)
        PEPP User's Guide
        Technical Report no. 5/92
===========================================================================
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