Automated performance modeling of software generated by a design environment

Automation is needed to make performance modeling faster and more accessibl e to software designers. This paper describes a prototype tool that exploit s recently developed techniques for automatic model construction from trace s. The performance model is a layered queuing model and it is based on trac es captured for certain selected scenarios which are determined to be impor tant for performance. The prototype tool has been integrated with a commerc ial software design environment that generates code with heavy use of stand ard libraries. The execution costs of the libraries has also been captured and used in the automatic model creation. The approach not only automates b uilding early models, but also gives models which can be maintained during development, using traces gathered from the implementations. The paper desc ribes the tool, the process by which it is applied, the process of capturin g and managing the execution cost data, and an example. To use the tool, th e designer further defines the scenarios, the execution environment, and th e workload intensity parameters. The designer can then experiment with diff erent environments and workloads, or revise the design, to improve the perf ormance. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.