A method and system for generating a communication model are disclosed. The communication
model is used to provide performance information on the use of communication networks
by application code. The expected utilization of resources is important to when
high performance is to be achieved in both cluster computing environments and information
power GRIDs.
The disclosed method and system is designed to generate a model of an underlying
network topology using detailed workload information, which encapsulates the expected
computation/communication requirements of an application. Such workload information
may be obtained from a number of different sources. Furthermore, the disclosed
method provides detailed information of the expected use of a network system unlike
traditional communication models that rely on statistical information and provide
general performance information.
The disclosed method is a hybrid model containing statistical model information
as well as steps for simulating the main stages that change the state of the communication
network traffic. As such, the evaluation time is orders of magnitude quicker than
traditional methods, while providing predictions, which are of reasonable accuracy.
The characteristics of different networks can be easily incorporated into the model,
and thus the model can be used in a variety of situations. The output of the model
is the expected delay of a set of communications, which can be further, expanded
into a suitable trace format and visualized for further investigation. In evaluation
tests, the disclosed method and system provides predictions which are more accurate
than simple regression models while requiring seconds of CPU processing time.
