language: en

[To appear in the 10th International Parallel Processing Symposium, April 1996. 1]

Modeling the Communication Performance of the IBM SP2

Gheith A. Abandah Edward S. Davidson
Advanced Computer Architecture Laboratory, Department of EECS University of Michigan
1301 Beal Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122
gabandah,davidson@eecs.umich.edu

Abstract The objective of this paper is to develop models that characterize the communication performance of a message-passing multicomputer by taking the IBM SP2 as a case study. The paper evaluates and models the three aspects of the communication performance: scheduling overhead, message-passing time, and synchronization overhead. Performance models are developed for the basic communication patterns, enabling the estimation of the communication times of a message-passing application. Such estimates facilitate activities such as application tuning, selection of the best available implementation technique, and performance comparisons among different multicomputers.

1. Introduction