Thesis (Ph.D.), pages 1-140 pp.. University Park, PA, USA: Pennsylvania State Univ --- Ann Arbor, MI, USA: University Microfilms (Order No. 90--18, 214), 1989.
Abstract: The author studies several problems related to the modeling and performance analysis of parallel computations. First, the author investigates the properties of a new task graph model, called the generalized task graphs. In parallel search, several possible solutions to a problem are carried out concurrently. The general task graphs are prone to problems such as deadlock, unboundedness, and unsafeness. The author defines the notion of well-formedness of task graphs by viewing them as high level Petri nets and provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which a generalized task graph is well formed. Next, the author proposes a new approximate iterative algorithm to predict the performance of a resource constrained queueing network. Detailed experimental results are presented which show that the algorithm converges quite fast and is reasonably accurate.
Keywords: performance modeling (of) parallel computation (in) resource-constrained system; generalized task graph; parallel search; deadlock; unboundedness; unsafeness; high level net; performance evaluation; queueing network.