CI-P: Planning Simulation Infrastructure Evaluation for Parallel/Distributed Computer Systems

由于包括由Google、Facebook、Amazon等提供的各种基于互联网的服务在内的有价值的基本应用的激增，以并行/分布式的方式在由许多连接的计算机(例如数据中心和超级计算机)组成的计算机系统上运行一个或多个应用的重要性持续增加。当考虑到这些应用对我们的社会、经济和环境的高度影响时，对运行这些应用的并行/分布式计算机系统的性能和功率效率的评估被证明是至关重要的。这就需要一个灵活的、详细的、开源的全系统仿真基础设施，而这是目前所缺乏的。这个项目的目标是为开发这样一个提高计算性能的评估基础设施奠定基础，以确保美国学术界和工业界在大规模并行/分布式计算方面的领先地位。这项计划拨款将使开发一个具有基本特征和模型的系统模拟器能够支持对简单的并行/分布式计算机系统的模拟。它将被分发给计算机体系结构和操作系统研究界，期望这样的模拟器将为开发更先进的全系统模拟基础设施奠定基础，该基础设施可以在未来快速而准确地模拟更具代表性的并行/分布式计算机系统。将安排一次辅导，以促进系统模拟器的使用，并将组织一次研讨会，由来自学术机构和领先的工业/国家研究实验室的学生、研究人员参加，以确定全面的系统模拟基础设施所需的各种要求和所需的功能。

The importance of running one or more applications on a computer system comprised of many connected computers such as data centers and supercomputers in a parallel/distributed manner has continued to increase because of the proliferation of valuable and essential applications including various Internet-based services provided by Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. The evaluation of performance and power efficiency of parallel/distributed computer systems running such applications prove to be critical when the high impact of these applications on our society, economy and environment is considered. This necessitates a flexible, detailed, and open-source full-system simulation infrastructure, which is lacking at present. The goal of this project is to lay the groundwork for developing such an evaluation infrastructure for increased computing performance, so as to assure the leading position of the US academia and industry in large-scale parallel/distributed computing.This planning grant will enable developing a system simulator augmented with rudimentary features and models to support simulation of a simple parallel/distributed computer system. It will be distributed to the computer architecture and operating system research communities with the expectation that such a simulator will lay the foundation for developing a more advanced full-system simulation infrastructure that can quickly but precisely simulate more representative parallel/distributed computer system in the future. A tutorial will be arranged to foster the use of the system simulator, and a workshop, which will involve students, researchers from academic institutions and leading industrial/national research labs, will be organized to identify various requirements and desirable features needed by a full blown system simulation infrastructure.