Simulating interconnection networks in RAW

The authors investigate the relationship between application program characteristics and interconnection network (ICN) performance using an execution driven simulation testbed: the reconfigurable architecture workbench (RAW). RAW simulates a wide variety of parallel architectures including both fine and coarse grain; SIMD, MIMD, and hybrid machines; and a wide variety of ICNs. They present RAW´s network model, the structure of RAW´s network simulator, a model for k-ary n-cube networks which are currently popular in the literature, and the results of experiments using the simulator. Their results show that application program characteristics can have a profound effect on network performance: a revelation that points out the benefits of studying interconnection networks in the context of overall application performance