EDPEPPS: a toolset for the design and performance evaluation of parallel applications

This paper describes a performance-oriented environment for the design of portable parallel software. The environment consists of a graphical design tool based on the PVM communication library for building parallel algorithms, a state-of-the-art simulation engine, a CPU characteriser and a visualisation tool for animation of program execution and visualisation of platform and network performance measures and statistics. The toolset is used to model a virtual machine composed of a cluster of workstations interconnected by a local area network. The simulation model used is modular and its components are interchangeable which allows easy re-configuration of the platform. Both communication and CPU models are validated