Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!ukma!gatech!hubcap!Steven
From: mcvax!inmos!zenith@uunet.UU.NET (Steven Zenith)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Re: Simulation of Multiprocessors.
Message-ID: <3360@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 27 Oct 88 15:33:45 GMT
Article-I.D.: hubcap.3360
Sender: fpst@hubcap.UUCP
Lines: 28
Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

Greetings!
Horace Dediu writes:

> I am interested in developing a flexible simulator for multiprocessor
> architectures.  That is, developing a formal description language for
> multi-functional-unit machines and using the description to simulate the
> architecture to determine performance.  The description would include the
> interconnection network (a graph) and the processor description (in ISPS
> notation [Barbacci '80]).  [...]

Maybe I don't understand this question properly (being new to this 
newsgroup). CSP and Occam are both languages able to provide a formal
description of "multi-functional-unit" machines. They do both assume
that the system is founded on a Communicating Process *Architecture*.
However, a "simulation" of any *configuration* of such units may be
written in Occam and performance evaluated on a single transputer.

> [...] I want to build a flexible simulator, in which the architecture is a
> free variable.

Again, I may be misunderstanding, do you mean 'architecture' or
'configuration'. Do you mean you are looking for a generalised notation
of some kind?



 *  Steven Ericsson Zenith
 |  zenith@inmos.uucp (INMOS Bristol, England)
    ** The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao **