NSIM: An interconnection network simulator for extreme-scale parallel computers

In the near future, interconnection networks of massively parallel computer systems will connect more than a hundred thousands of computing nodes. The performance evaluation of the interconnection networks can provide real insights to help the development of efficient communication library. Hence, to evaluate the performance of such interconnection networks, simulation tools capable of modeling the networks with sufficient details, supporting a user-friendly interface to describe communication patterns, providing the users with enough performance information, completing simulations within a reasonable time, are a real necessity. This paper introduces a novel interconnection network simulator NSIM, for the evaluation of the performance of extreme-scale interconnection networks. The simulator implements a simplified simulation model so as to run faster without any loss of accuracy. Unlike the existing simulators, NSIM is built on the execution-driven simulation approach. The simulator also provides a MPI-compatible programming interface. Thus, the simulator can emulate parallel program execution and correctly simulate point-to-point and collective communications that are dynamically changed by network congestion. The experimental results in this paper showed sufficient accuracy of this simulator by comparing the simulator and the real machine. We also confirmed that the simulator is capable of evaluating ultra large-scale interconnection networks, consumes smaller memory area, and runs faster than the existing simulator. This paper also introduces a simulation service built on a cloud environment. Without installing NSIM, users can simulate interconnection networks with various configurations by using a web browser.