ASYNCHRONOUS PROCESS SIMULATOR FOR PARALLEL SYSTEMS (APSPS)

Parallel computer systems are well known to be very complex and their design involves difficult hardware/software tradeoffs. For such comple x systems an early performance evaluation is crucial, especially when several designs of the same system are to be compared. The design of p arallel complex systems, which generally have real time requirements, consist of concurrent processes and imply special hardware, can only b e done using an overall comprehensive method, In recent years many new techniques, methods and tools have been used in the attempt to overco me the design problems of complex systems, A global understanding of t he design process is the key factor in defining a valid new approach t hat will enable accurate performance evaluation of the system during t he design phase, The paper presents a design method and a new user-fri endly software tool called APSPS (Asynchronous Process Simulator for P arallel Systems), The simulator, APSPS, is built on a PC platform with a graphical interface, Several features such as ease of understanding , ease of design, abstraction and reliability were kept in mind when d eveloping the proposed simulator, The simulator was developed using ob ject oriented concepts in the C++ language which provides the features in mind, and enables the creation of a general simulator.