A reactive workload generation framework for simulation-based performance engineering of system interconnects

In developing system interconnects, it is important to be able to analyze the performance as early in the design process as possible. Since modern interconnect behaviors are often too complex to be captured by analytical modeling, simulation is generally seen as the best solution to get performance measurement results. Early in the design process, the system is modeled at a high level of abstraction and a complete system model is not available. Therefore, a flexible framework for workload generation is needed. We believe that classical workload generation techniques from the network domain are not sufficient to capture the behavior of closely coupled modules. We propose a reactive workload generation scheme that is suitable for simulation of communication patterns. In our framework, workloads are generated by specifying use cases that are based on events and resulting actions. The post-processing analysis then provides insights into model performance for a specified generated workload.