An incremental benchmark suite for performance tuning of parallel discrete event simulation

Parallel simulation has been an active research area for more than a decade, and several parallel simulation algorithms have been proposed. To evaluate parallel simulation environments, there is a need for a common benchmark suite. Such benchmarks should allow the designer of simulation kernels to: (i) evaluate how efficiently the simulation kernel runs on specific architectures; and (ii) evaluate how simulation problems scale on the kernel. A vast majority of benchmarks suggested in the literature focus on the latter problem. The first requirement is however equally important, as such benchmarks are needed to implement efficient simulation systems. In this report, we advocate an incremental benchmark methodology which is primarily intended for performance tuning. The benchmark suite is based on a small set of ping models with which it is possible to effectively isolate and estimate various overheads, contention and latencies encountered in simulation kernels. The use of the benchmark suite is illustrated by its application to performance tuning and evaluation of a time warp kernel