PARSE: simulation of message passing communication networks

The number of design decisions for communication network hardware in message passing distributed memory systems is quite large, as illustrated by many different implemented and proposed designs. Many of the decisions are driven by, on one side, performance requirements of targeted applications for the parallel system, and on the other side, hardware implementation costs. To obtain cost effective communication hardware matching a certain application domain, use of a parallel architecture simulation framework is inevitable. The simulator presented here, named PARSE, offers a base for such a framework. It can accurately simulate a wide range of communication architectures and, unlike analytic communication models, does properly model all performance aspects. Changing parameters of simulated architectures is very flexible and the object oriented implementation of the simulator facilitates future extensions and enhancements