Performance limitations in parallel processor simulations

Journal Article · Thu Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 1987 · Trans. Soc. Comp. Simul.; (United States)

OSTI ID:6728229

O'Grady, E P; Wang, C H

A jet-engine model is partitioned and simulated on a parallel processor system consisting of five 8086/8087 floating-point computers. The simulation uses Heun's integration method. A near-optimal parallel simulation (in the sense of minimum execution time) achieves speedup of only 2.13 and efficiency of 42.6 percent, in effect wasting 57.4 percent of the available processing power. A detailed analysis identifies and graphically demonstrates why the system fails to achieve ideal performance (viz., speedup of 5 and efficiency of 100 percent). Inherent characteristics of the problem equations and solution algorithm account for the loss of nearly half of the available processing power. Overheads associated with interprocessor communication and processor synchronization account for only a small fraction of the lost processing power. The effects of these and other factors which limit parallel processor performance are illustrated through real-time timing-analyzer tracers describing the run/idle status of the parallel processors during the simulation. 12 references.

• Research Organization: Arizona State Univ., Tempe (USA); Sierra Semiconductor, Inc., San Jose, CA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6728229
• Journal Information: Trans. Soc. Comp. Simul.; (United States), Journal Name: Trans. Soc. Comp. Simul.; (United States) Vol. 4; ISSN TSCSE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990210* -- Supercomputers-- (1987-1989)
ALGORITHMS
COMMUNICATIONS
COMPUTER GRAPHICS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
ENGINES
INTEGRAL CALCULUS
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
MATHEMATICS
PARALLEL PROCESSING
PERFORMANCE
PROGRAMMING
SIMULATION
TIME MEASUREMENT