SAD kernels: a software tool to evaluate synchronization behavior of multiprocessors

The authors propose a method to characterize the performance of multiprocessor systems at the level of a single grain, called a unit grain, of execution. The characterization is via experimental measurement of individual components of performance. The authors introduce a family of artificial workload kernels, called SAD-kernels, as an effective tool for measuring this performance. The usefulness of these kernels lies in their ability to selectively assess a given shared-memory multiprocessor along several performance dimensions that can be controlled by the person performing the evaluation. The proposed methodology was demonstrated by measuring and comparing the performance of two commercial shared-memory machines currently in use