An Interactive Simulation Facility for the Evaluation of Shared-Resource Architectures (Parallel ARchitecture SIMulator - PARSIM)

A general-purpose, interactive simulation facility for modeling computational systems is described. The simulation facility is especially suited for evaluating the performance of parallel computational structures on workloads exhibiting arbitrary degrees of parallelism. Two different simulators are provided, one that operates at the processor level only, ignoring explicit system connectivity; and one that allows a detailed specification of system architecture and connectivity. Supplementing the simulators are: (a) a workload generator for synthesizing workloads exhibiting any desired degree of parallelism, and (b) a resource specification system that allows easy description of the capabilities and parameters of various resources in a system. Several graphical utility programs are provided to aid in interpretation of simulation results. The system has been implemented in the programming language 'C' on a Data General MV/8000 computer operating under the Data General Advanced Operating System; the system should port easily to other virtual architecture machines with a 'C' compiler.