Simulation vs. prototype execution: a case study

In distributed computer environments and parallel applications many factors determine system performance. The main problem in increasing the performance of such systems is the impact of synchronization on the processor utilization. Synchronization overhead is caused mainly by intrinsic properties of the application (inherent parallelism, data and control dependencies, etc.) and by architectural and organizational features of the system. Experiments are discussed which concern the profiling of a distributed system, based on the client model. The basic goals are to compare the simulation results, such as parallelism profile, synchronization profile and speed-up profile, produced by a profiler tool and the similar results produced by the execution of the prototype implementation. Both kinds of results are presented, and the limitations and advantages of the simulation approach are discussed.<
>