Timing simulation of paragon codes using workstation clusters

This paper describes a parallel simulation software tool, LAPSE-nx-lib, that executes on a network of workstations. Using this tool, message-passing codes written for an N processor Intel Paragon can be executed on M workstations (N ≥ M). The timing estimate produced by the simulator is a prediction of how long the code would have run had it been executed on the N processor Paragon. LAPSE-nx-lib combines nx-lib, a publicly available library that provides the functionality of Intel Paragon nx message-passing calls on networks of workstations, with LAPSE, a parallelized timing simulator that we originally developed to run on the Paragon. We report on our early experiences with this tool on a network of Sun Sparc-10 workstations.