A graphical interface for modeling a hierarchy of performance models for software systems

A computer-aided performance evaluation (CAPE) tool to support the evaluation of graphical, hierarchical performance models used to design parallel/distributed real-time software systems is presented. It is a graphical interface for CAPE environments called GRAPE. GRAPE supports five different performance models: a queuing model, a state model, a computation structure model, a data flow model and a statistical model. Each of these models is contained in a separate subsystem, but they are linked together to represent multilevel hierarchical modeling, allowing the user to integrate the relationships between different performance metrics at different levels of analysis. The overall structure and graphic environment of GRAPE and the five models are described.<>