Performance prediction and evaluation of parallel processing on a NUMA multiprocessor

The efficiency of the basic operations of a NUMA (nonuniform memory access) multiprocessor determines the parallel processing performance on a NUMA multiprocessor. The authors present several analytical models for predicting and evaluating the overhead of interprocessor communication, process scheduling, process synchronization, and remote memory access, where network contention and memory contention are considered. Performance measurements to support the models and analyses through several numerical examples have been done on the BBN GP1000, a NUMA shared-memory multiprocessor. Analytical and experimental results give a comprehensive understanding of the various effects, which are important for the effective use of NUMA shared-memory multiprocessor. The results presented can be used to determine optimal strategies in developing an efficient programming environment for a NUMA system