Flight simulation benchmark for parallel Ada

A benchmark suite was developed for the parallel Ada environment which could be utilized to measure multiprocessor speedup with varying frequency of intertask synchronization and across various vendor architectures. The benchmark suite centered around the development of a multitask aircraft/avionics airliner simulation. This flight simulation models such modules as aerodynamics, kinematics, engines, autothrottles, pitch and roll autopilots, and a simplified flight management computer. These modules are represented as twelve separate tasks that communicate via global shared memory in one version and with individual messages in another. In addition to the required calculation load, a calibrated but variable load of floating point processing was added to modulate the frequency of task synchronization which was implemented via the Ada rendezvous. This was important due to the expected degradation in system performance as the frequency of synchronization was increased. Some general-purpose processors used in the study included the Sequent Symmetry, the Alliant FX-8, the Encore Multimax, the Harris Nighthawk, and the BiiN 60. Results of the benchmark testing point to the speedup is available