Overview and new trends on PSEE (Parallel System Evaluation Environment)

Programs for parallel distributed memory computers are difficult to write, understand, evaluate and debug. The design and performance evaluation of such algorithms is much more complex than for the conventional sequential ones. In such complex systems, the performance is highly influenced by factors such as the interconnection scheme, granularity, computing/communication ratio, algorithm topology, parallel languages, and operating system policies. Interaction between these factors is not easy to understand and is often unpredictable. This paper presents an overview of PSEE (Parallel System Evaluation Environment), which is an interactive graphics environment, as well as several enhancements to increase the goodness of this tool. PSEE is an easy-to-use environment that enables parallel systems programmers to take decisions about the behaviour of parallel programs and parallel computers in terms such as scalability, tuning and performance