Parameterized benchmarking of parallel discrete event simulation systems: Communication, computation, and memory

We introduce La-pdes, a parameterized benchmark application for measuring parallel and serial discrete event simulation (PDES) performance. Applying a holistic view of PDES system performance, La-pdes tests the performance factors of (i) the (P)DES engine in terms of event queue efficiency, synchronization mechanism, and load-balancing schemes; (ii) available hardware in terms of handling computationally intensive loads, memory size, cache hierarchy, and clock speed; and (iii) interaction with communication middleware (often MPI) through message buffering. La-pdes consists of seven scenarios for individual performance factors and an agglomerative stress evaluation scenario. The scenarios are implemented through concrete values of input parameters to La-pdes, which include number of entities and events, endtime, inter-send time distributions, computational and event load distributions, memory use distributions, cache-friendliness, and event queue sizes. We demonstrate through instrumentation that La-pdes assumptions regarding distributions are realistic and we present results of the eight scenarios on the PDES engine Simian.