MIT VLSI Memo No. Practical methods of multiprocessor performance analysis use address traces to encapsulate the behavior of parallel programs. This paper reviews various multiprocessor address tracing schemes and presents the design and performance of a compiler-aided tracing scheme that efficiently obtains traces of systems with an arbitrary number of processors. The paper describes coupled and decoupled classes of trace-driven simulation schemes, and compares their relative speed and accuracy. Decoupled techniques simulate the various components of the multiprocessor separately, without modeling the feedback between the processor, the memory system, and the interconnection network.
Coupled techniques simulate the feedback between multiprocessor components.
We validate a decoupled trace-driven simulation scheme that is over an order of magnitude faster than coupled schemes, yet has comparable accuracy. Back to Alewife Publications . Back to Alewife .