4th International ICST Conference on Performance Evaluation Methodologies and Tools

Research Article

A Performance Experiment System Supporting Fast Mapping of System Issues

Download461 downloads
  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/ICST.VALUETOOLS2009.7807,
        author={Martin  Mroz and Greg Franks},
        title={A Performance Experiment System Supporting Fast Mapping of System Issues},
        proceedings={4th International ICST Conference on Performance Evaluation Methodologies and Tools},
        publisher={ICST},
        proceedings_a={VALUETOOLS},
        year={2010},
        month={5},
        keywords={Performance Analysis modeling languages sensitivity experiment control efficient solution},
        doi={10.4108/ICST.VALUETOOLS2009.7807}
    }
    
  • Martin Mroz
    Greg Franks
    Year: 2010
    A Performance Experiment System Supporting Fast Mapping of System Issues
    VALUETOOLS
    ICST
    DOI: 10.4108/ICST.VALUETOOLS2009.7807
Martin Mroz1,*, Greg Franks1,*
  • 1: Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON Canada K1S 5B6.
*Contact email: mroz@sce.carleton.ca, greg@sce.carleton.ca

Abstract

The most fruitful use of a performance model is to study deep properties of the system, and hypothetical situations that might lead to improved configurations or designs. This requires executing experiments on the model, which evaluate systematic changes. Parameter estimation methods also exploit search in a parameter space to fit a model to performance data. Estimation, sensitivity and optimization experiments can require hundreds of evaluations, and the efficiency of the analytic model solver may become an issue. Analytic models usually provide fast solutions (compared to simulations) but repetitive solutions for near-neighbour models offer opportunities for further reducing the effort. This work describes an experiment driver for a layered queueing solver which provides a factor of two improvement. It also raises the issue of domain-specific languages for model experiments, versus general languages with suitable libraries.