An Interpretive Framework for Application Performance Prediction

Software development in parallel/distributed environment is a non-trivial task and depends greatly on the availability of appropriate support in terms of development tools and environments. Performance prediction /evaluation tools form a critical part of any software development environment as they enable the developer to visualize the effects of various design choices on the performance of the application. This paper presents an interpretive model for a source driven performance prediction framework. A prototype framework based on the proposed model has been developed for the iPSC/860 system. Numerical results obtained on this system are presented. These results confirm the potential of interpretive performance prediction techniques and their applicability. Keywords: Performance prediction, Performance interpretation, Parallel/Distributed software development, System & Application characterization