Integrated architectural application characterization tools for comparative assessment of parallel systems

PAWS (Parallel Assessment Window System) is an experimental research tool currently operational at Syracuse University that provides a single unified environment for performing application specific analysis for existing, prototype, and conceptual machine architectures. The flexibility of the system allows comparisons among vastly different machine architectures running a common application. PAWS consists of four tools; an application characterization tool, an architecture characterization tool, an interactive graphic display tool (IGDT), and a performance assessment tool (PAT). Using the application characterization tool, Ada programs are transformed into machine independent data flow graphs and displayed showing the parallelism contained in the application to the user. These graphs are partitioned onto a target machine, based on that machine's attributes, which are created and stored using the architectural characterization tool. Profile plots are generated showing both the parallelism of the partitioned graph, and the predicted parallelism of the application