On the computation of performance characteristics of concurrent programs using GSPNs

Petri net based models are proposed in this paper as the vehicles for the characterization of the processing and communication parameters of concurrent programs. A technique for the construction of a GSPN model as a direct translation of a concurrent program is used and a method is presented that allows to build, from a GSPN model, graph representations that are useful for preliminary assessment of the performance of the programs and for solving the problem of allocating the processes of a concurrent program to the processors of a given architecture. The concept of phase in the execution of a concurrent program is introduced and used to construct communication graphs that are simpler than those obtained considering the execution of a program as a whole. An example of the application of the technique is presented together with experimental results obtained from direct measurements of a real program. The agreement between the performance indices computed with the models and the results of direct measurements shows the practical relevance of this technique.