Penvelope: A New Approach to Rapidly Predicting the Performance of Computationally Intensive Scientific Applications on Parallel Computer Architectures

Abstract

A common complaint when dealing with the performance of computationally intensive scientific applications on parallel computers is that programs exist to predict the performance of radar systems, missiles and artillery shells, drugs, etc., but no one knows how to predict the performance of these applications on a parallel computer. Actually, that is not quite true. A more accurate statement is that no one knows how to predict the performance of these applications on a parallel computer in a reasonable amount of time. PENVELOPE is an attempt to remedy this situation. It is an extension to Amdahl's Law/Gustafson's work on scaled speed-up that takes into account the cost of interprocessor communication and operating system overhead, yet is simple enough that it was implemented as an Excel spreadsheet.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADP023864

Entities

People

  • Daniel M. Pressel
  • David Cronk
  • Sameer S. Shende

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Bandwidth
  • Computations
  • Computer Architecture
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Computing System Architectures
  • Data Sets
  • Engineering
  • Frequency
  • High Performance Computing
  • Law
  • Military Research
  • Operating Systems
  • Radar
  • Supercomputers
  • Technical Information Centers
  • Universities

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Educational Psychology
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.