Systems modeling with xpetri

The design of a new modeling tool, xpetri, is described, and its use in solving real computer system design problems is illustrated. The tool is based on an extension of stochastic Petri nets, and provides both a succinct model language specification and a wide-ranging collection of modeling capabilities including detailed stochastic workload representation. Although solutions of models in the specified xpetri language are outside the realm of purely analytic techniques, favorable solution times are provided via a multi-threaded simulation compiler. A technique is suggested for allowing the threads to execute transition firing outside strictly time-sequential order. An X-windows (Motif) interface offers fast and reliable generation of models in the xpetri language.