Effcient Simulation of Message-Passing in Distributed-Memory Architectures

Abstract

In this thesis we propose a distributed-memory parallel-computer simulation system called PUPPET (Performance Under a Pseudo-Parallel EnvironmenT). It allows the evaluation of parallel programs run in a pseudo-parallel system, where a single processor is used to multitask the program's processes, as if they were run on the simulated system. This allows development of applications and teaching of parallel programming without the use of valuable supercomputing resources. We use a standard message-passing language, MPI, so that when desired (e. g. , development is complete) the program can be run on a truly parallel system without any changes. There are several features in PUPPET that do not exist in any other simulation system. Support for all deterministic MPI features is available, including collective and non-blocking communication. Multitasking (more processes than processors) can be simulated, allowing the evaluation of load-balancing schemes. PUPPET is very loosely coupled with the program, so that a program can be run once and then evaluated on many simulated systems with multiple process-to-processor mappings. Finally, we propose a new model of direct networks that ignores network traffic, greatly improving simulation speed and often not signficantly affecting accuracy.