Event-based study of the effect of execution environments on parallel program performance

In this paper we seek to demonstrate the importance of studying the effect of changes in execution environment parameters, on parallel applications executed on state-of-the-art multiprocessors. A comprehensive methodology for event-based analysis of program behavior is introduced. This methodology is used to study the performance significance of various system parameters such as processor speed, message-buffer size, buffer copy speed, network bandwidth, communication latency, interrupt overheads and other system parameters. With the help of a few CFD examples, we illustrate the use of our technique in determining suitable parameter values of the execution environment for three applications.