Embedded instrumentation for evaluation task sharing performance in a distributed computing system

Current trends in performance measurement on distributed computers are briefly reviewed. An example of application level performance measurement on a distributed computing system using software based instrumentation techniques is considered. Embedded software instrumentation for measuring the performance of a decentralized adaptive task sharing algorithm in a distributed computing system is described. For the application described, simplicity and flexibility provided by software-based instrumentation are demonstrated, and the limitations are discussed. The instrumentation subsystem, tradeoffs involved, design choices, and quantitative results obtained from the implementation on an experimental distributed computing system consisting of VAX stations connected by a local area network are discussed.<
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