PETRI NET BASED MODELING OF PARALLEL PROGRAMS EXECUTING ON DISTRIBUTED MEMORY MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEMS

Abstract

The development of parallel programs following the paradigm of communicating sequen- tial processes to be executed on distributed memory multiprocessor systems is addressed. The key issue in programming parallel machines today is to provide computerized tools supporting the development of efficient parallel software, i.e. software effectively har- nessing the power of parallel processing systems. The critical situations where a parallel programmer needs help is in expressing a parallel algorithm in a programming language, in getting a parallel program to work and in tuning it to get optimum performance (for example speedup). . We show that the Petri net formalism is higly suitable as a performance modeling technique for asynchronous parallel systems, by introducing a model taking care of the parallel program, parallel architecture and mapping influences on overall system perfor- mance. PRM -net (Program-Resource- Mapping) models comprise a Petri net model of the multiple flows of control in a parallel program, a Petri net model of the parallel hardware and the process-to-processor mapping information into a single integrated performance model. Automated analysis of PRM-net models addresses correctness and performance of parallel programs mapped to parallel hardware. Questions upon the correctness of parallel programs can be answered by investigating behavioural properties of Petri net programs like liveness, reachability, boundedness, mutualy exclusiveness etc. Peformance of parallel programs is usefully considered only in concern with a dedicated target hard- ware. For this reason it is essential to integrate multiprocessor hardware characteristics into the specification of a parallel program. The integration is done by assigning the concurrent processes to physical processing devices and communication patterns among parallel processes to communication media connecting processing elements yielding an in- tegrated, Petri net based performance model. Evaluation of the integrated model applies simulation and markovian analysis to derive expressions characterising the peformance of the program being developed. Synthesis and decomposition rules for hierarchical models naturally give raise to use PRM-net models for graphical, performance oriented parallel programming, support- ing top-down (stepwise refinement) as well as bottom-up development approaches. The graphical representation of Petri net programs visualizes phenomena like parallelism, syn- chronisation, communication, sequential and alternative execution. Modularity of pro- gram blocks aids reusability, prototyping is promoted by automated code generation on the basis of high level program specifications.