Cluster Systems and Simulation: from Benchmarking to Off-line Performance Prediction

This paper describes a simulation-based technique for the performance prediction of message-passing applications on cluster systems by means of benchmark data. Given data measuring the performance of a target cluster in the form of standard benchmark results, along with the details of the chosen computing configuration, it is possible to build and to validate automatically a detailed simulation model. This makes it possible to predict off-line, i.e., without resorting to the real hardware, the performance of fully-developed or even of skeletal code. An XML-based language (MetaPL) is adopted to describe the application behavior in the development stage. After a description of the approach and the illustration of the construction and validation of the simulation model, the paper presents a case study.