<center>
\htmlonly
-<img align=center src="simgrid_logo.png" alt="SimGrid"><br>
+<a href="http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr" border="0"><img align=center src="simgrid_logo.png" alt="SimGrid"></a><br>
\endhtmlonly
</center>
-\section quick Quick start
-
+\htmlinclude .index.doc.toc
SimGrid is a toolkit that provides core functionalities for the simulation
of distributed applications in heterogeneous distributed environments.
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_BEGIN______ --!> \endhtmlonly
The specific goal of the project is to facilitate research in the area of
distributed and parallel application scheduling on distributed computing
platforms ranging from simple network of workstations to Computational
Grids.
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_END______ --!> \endhtmlonly
-\subsection quick_dl Getting and installing the software
-
-The SimGrid software package can be downloaded from
-<a href="http://gcl.ucsd.edu/simgrid/dl/">here</a>.
-
-To compile and install it, simply type the following. If you are not
-familiar with compiling C files under UNIX and using libraries, please check
-the \ref faq. SimGrid also works under Windows, but we do not distribute any
-pre-compiled binaries [yet].
-
-\verbatim $ ./configure
- $ make all
- [become root]
- # make install\endverbatim
-
-\subsection quick_more More information
-
-The API is described <a href="API/html/modules.html">here</a> while
-<a href="examples/html/modules.html">this page</a> presents some example of
-use.
-
-For more information about the SimGrid toolkit, please simply keep reading
-this page. It is organized as follow:
-
- - \ref overview: Presentation of the toolkit, of each of its components
- and of their interactions.
- - \ref people: Who is behind this project.
- - \ref publications: Some articles providing more details about the
- SimGrid toolkit or using and validating it.
+ - The official webpage is <a href="http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/">simgrid.gforge.inria.fr</a>.
+ - The Frequently Asked Questions are <a href="faq.html">here</a>.
+ - The development webpage is <a href="https://gforge.inria.fr/projects/simgrid//">gforge.inria.fr/projects/simgrid</a>.
+ - The user mailing list is <simgrid-user@lists.gforge.inria.fr>
+ - The SimGrid software package can be downloaded from <a href="https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/?group_id=12">here</a>.
+<br>
<hr>
\section overview Overview of the toolkit components
-As depicted by the following schema, the SimGrid toolkit is basically
-three-layered.
+As depicted by the following diagram, the SimGrid toolkit is basically
+three-layered (click on the picture to jump to a specific component).
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_BEGIN______ --!> \endhtmlonly
+\htmlonly
+<center>
+\endhtmlonly
+\htmlinclude simgrid_modules.map
\htmlonly
-<center><img align=center src="simgrid_modules.jpg" alt="SimGrid"><br>
-<b>Relationships between the SimGrid components</b>
+<br><b>Relationships between the SimGrid components (click to jump to API)</b>
</center>
\endhtmlonly
-
-\subsection overview_fondation Basement layer
-
-The basement of the whole toolkit is constituted by the <b>\ref XBT_API
-(eXtended Bundle of Tools)</b>.
-
-It is a portable library providing some grounding features such as \ref
-XBT_log and \ref XBT_error. XBT also encompass the following convenient
-datastructures: \ref XBT_dynar, \ref XBT_fifo, \ref XBT_dict, \ref XBT_heap,
-\ref XBT_set and \ref XBT_swag.
-
-See the \ref XBT_API section for more details.
-
-\subsection overview_kernel Simulation kernel layer
-
-The core functionnalities to simulate a virtual platform are provided by a
-module called <b>\ref SURF_API</b> ("that's historical, my friend"). It is
-very low-level and is not intended to be used as such by end-users. Instead,
-it serve as a basis for the higher level layer.
-
-SURF main features are a fast max-min linear solver and the ability to
-change transparently the model used to describe the platform. This greatly
-eases the comparison of the several models existing in the litterature.
-
-See the \ref SURF_API section for more details.
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_END______ --!> \endhtmlonly
\subsection overview_envs Programmation environments layer
-This simulation kernel is used to build several programmation environments.
-Each of them target a specific audiance and constitute a different paradigm.
-To choose which of them you want to use, you have to think about what you
-want to do and what would be the result of your work.
+SimGrid provides several programmation environments built on top of a unique
+simulation kernel. Each environment targets a specific audiance and
+constitutes a different paradigm. To choose which of them you want to use,
+you have to think about what you want to do and what would be the result of
+your work.
- If you want to study a theoritical problem and compare several
heuristics, you probably want to try <b>\ref MSG_API</b> (yet another
See the \ref GRAS_API section for more details.
If your favorite programming environment/model is not there (BSP,
-components, etc.) is not represented in the SimGrid toolkit yet, you may
-consider adding it. You should contact us first, though.
-
-Any question, remark or suggestion are welcome on the
-<a href=https://listes.ens-lyon.fr/wws/info/simgrid2-users>SimGrid users
-mailing list</a>.
-
-<hr>
+components, OpenMP, etc.) is not represented in the SimGrid toolkit yet, you may
+consider adding it. You should contact us first on the
+<a href=http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/mailman/listinfo/simgrid-devel>SimGrid
+developers mailing list</a>, though.
-\section people People
-
-The authors of SimGrid are:
+\subsection overview_kernel Simulation kernel layer
- - Henri Casanova <casanova#cs.ucsd.edu>
- - Arnaud Legrand <arnaud.legrand#imag.fr>
- - Martin Quinson <mquinson#debian.org>
+The core functionnalities to simulate a virtual platform are provided by a
+module called <b>\ref SURF_API</b>. It is
+very low-level and is not intended to be used as such by end-users. Instead,
+it serve as a basis for the higher level layer.
-\subsection contributers Contributers and alumni project members
+SURF main features are a fast max-min linear solver and the ability to
+change transparently the model used to describe the platform. This greatly
+eases the comparison of the several models existing in the litterature.
- - Loris Marchal: wrote the new algorithm for simulation TCP
- bandwidth-sharing.
- - Julien Lerouge : wrote a XML parser for ENV descriptions and helped for
- the general design during a 4 month period (march-june 2002)
- in the <LIP.
- - Clément Menier and Marc Perache : wrote a first prototype of the MSG
- interface during a project at ENS-Lyon (jan 2002).
- - Dmitrii Zagorodnov : wrote some parts of the first version of SimGrid
- (1999).
+See the \ref SURF_API section for more details.
-<hr>
+\subsection overview_fondation Base layer
-\section publications Selected publications
+The base of the whole toolkit is constituted by the <b>\ref XBT_API
+(eXtended Bundle of Tools)</b>.
-When citing SimGrid, the prefered reference paper is still <i>SimGrid: A
-Toolkit for the Simulation of Application Scheduling</i> by Henri Casanova,
-even if it's a bit old now. We are activly working on improving this.
+It is a portable library providing some grounding features such as \ref
+XBT_log, \ref XBT_ex and \ref XBT_config. XBT also encompass
+the following convenient datastructures: \ref XBT_dynar, \ref XBT_fifo, \ref
+XBT_dict, \ref XBT_heap, \ref XBT_set and \ref XBT_swag.
-\subsection simulation About simulation
+See the \ref XBT_API section for more details.
-\li <b>Scheduling Distributed Applications: the
- SimGrid Simulation Framework</b>\n
- by <em>Henri Casanova and Arnaud Legrand and Loris Marchal</em>\n
- Proceedings of the third IEEE International Symposium
- on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid'03)\n
- Since the advent of distributed computer systems an active field
- of research has been the investigation of scheduling strategies
- for parallel applications. The common approach is to employ
- scheduling heuristics that approximate an optimal
- schedule. Unfortunately, it is often impossible to obtain
- analytical results to compare the efficacy of these heuristics.
- One possibility is to conducts large numbers of back-to-back
- experiments on real platforms. While this is possible on
- tightly-coupled platforms, it is infeasible on modern distributed
- platforms (i.e. Grids) as it is labor-intensive and does not
- enable repeatable results. The solution is to resort to
- simulations. Simulations not only enables repeatable results but
- also make it possible to explore wide ranges of platform and
- application scenarios.\n
- In this paper we present the SimGrid framework which enables the
- simulation of distributed applications in distributed computing
- environments for the specific purpose of developing and evaluating
- scheduling algorithms. This paper focuses on SimGrid v2, which
- greatly improves on the first version of the software with more
- realistic network models and topologies. SimGrid v2 also enables
- the simulation of distributed scheduling agents, which has become
- critical for current scheduling research in large-scale platforms.
- After describing and validating these features, we present a case
- study by which we demonstrate the usefulness of SimGrid for
- conducting scheduling research.
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_BEGIN______ --!> \endhtmlonly
+<br>
+The SimGrid software package can be downloaded from
+<a href="https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/?group_id=12">here</a>.<br>
-\li <b>A Network Model for Simulation of Grid Application</b>\n
- by <em>Henri Casanova and Loris Marchal</em>\n
- \anchor paper_tcp
- In this work we investigate network models that can be
- potentially employed in the simulation of scheduling algorithms for
- distributed computing applications. We seek to develop a model of TCP
- communication which is both high-level and realistic. Previous research
- works show that accurate and global modeling of wide-area networks, such
- as the Internet, faces a number of challenging issues. However, some
- global models of fairness and bandwidth-sharing exist, and can be link
- withthe behavior of TCP. Using both previous results and simulation (with
- NS), we attempt to understand the macroscopic behavior of
- TCP communications. We then propose a global model of the network for the
- Grid platform. We perform partial validation of this model in
- simulation. The model leads to an algorithm for computing
- bandwidth-sharing. This algorithm can then be implemented as part of Grid
- application simulations. We provide such an implementation for the
- SimGrid simulation toolkit.\n
- ftp://ftp.ens-lyon.fr/pub/LIP/Rapports/RR/RR2002/RR2002-40.ps.gz
+If you are interested in the history of SimGrid and in current and planned development,
+you can find out more <a href="history.html">here</a>.
+Any question, remark or suggestion are welcome on the
+<a href="http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/mailman/listinfo/simgrid-user">SimGrid users
+mailing list</a>.
-\li <b>MetaSimGrid : Towards realistic scheduling simulation of
- distributed applications</b>\n
- by <em>Arnaud Legrand and Julien Lerouge</em>\n
- Most scheduling problems are already hard on homogeneous
- platforms, they become quite intractable in an heterogeneous
- framework such as a metacomputing grid. In the best cases, a
- guaranteed heuristic can be found, but most of the time, it is
- not possible. Real experiments or simulations are often
- involved to test or to compare heuristics. However, on a
- distributed heterogeneous platform, such experiments are
- technically difficult to drive, because of the genuine
- instability of the platform. It is almost impossible to
- guarantee that a platform which is not dedicated to the
- experiment, will remain exactly the same between two tests,
- thereby forbidding any meaningful comparison. Simulations are
- then used to replace real experiments, so as to ensure the
- reproducibility of measured data. A key issue is the
- possibility to run the simulations against a realistic
- environment. The main idea of trace-based simulation is to
- record the platform parameters today, and to simulate the
- algorithms tomorrow, against the recorded data: even though it
- is not the current load of the platform, it is realistic,
- because it represents a fair summary of what happened
- previously. A good example of a trace-based simulation tool is
- SimGrid, a toolkit providing a set of core abstractions and
- functionalities that can be used to easily build simulators for
- specific application domains and/or computing environment
- topologies. Nevertheless, SimGrid lacks a number of convenient
- features to craft simulations of a distributed application
- where scheduling decisions are not taken by a single
- process. Furthermore, modeling a complex platform by hand is
- fastidious for a few hosts and is almost impossible for a real
- grid. This report is a survey on simulation for scheduling
- evaluation purposes and present MetaSimGrid, a simulator built
- on top of SimGrid.\n
- ftp://ftp.ens-lyon.fr/pub/LIP/Rapports/RR/RR2002/RR2002-28.ps.gz
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_END______ --!> \endhtmlonly
-\li <b>SimGrid: A Toolkit for the Simulation of Application
- Scheduling</b>\n
- by <em>Henri Casanova</em>\n
- Advances in hardware and software technologies have made it
- possible to deploy parallel applications over increasingly large
- sets of distributed resources. Consequently, the study of
- scheduling algorithms for such applications has been an active area
- of research. Given the nature of most scheduling problems one must
- resort to simulation to effectively evaluate and compare their
- efficacy over a wide range of scenarios. It has thus become
- necessary to simulate those algorithms for increasingly complex
- distributed, dynamic, heterogeneous environments. In this paper we
- present SimGrid, a simulation toolkit for the study of scheduling
- algorithms for distributed application. This paper gives the main
- concepts and models behind SimGrid, describes its API and
- highlights current implementation issues. We also give some
- experimental results and describe work that builds on SimGrid's
- functionalities.\n
- http://grail.sdsc.edu/papers/simgrid_ccgrid01.ps.gz
+<hr>
+\htmlonly
+<center>
+<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/LGPL/2.1/"><img alt="CC-GNU LGPL" border="0" src="http://creativecommons.org/images/public/cc-LGPL-a.png" /></a>
-\subsection research Papers using SimGrid results
+<a href="http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/"><img src="http://gforge.org/images/pow-gforge.png" alt="Back to the gforge site" border="0" /></a>
+</center>
+\endhtmlonly
-\li <b>Optimal algorithms for scheduling divisible workloads on
- heterogeneous systems</b>\n
- by <em>Olivier Beaumont and Arnaud Legrand and Yves Robert</em>\n
- In this paper, we discuss several algorithms for scheduling
- divisible loads on heterogeneous systems. Our main contributions
- are (i) new optimality results for single-round algorithms and (ii)
- the design of an asymptotically optimal multi-round algorithm. This
- multi-round algorithm automatically performs resource selection, a
- difficult task that was previously left to the user. Because it is
- periodic, it is simpler to implement, and more robust to changes in
- the speeds of processors or communication links. On the theoretical
- side, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first published
- result assessing the absolute performance of a multi-round
- algorithm. On the practical side, extensive simulations reveal
- that our multi-round algorithm outperforms existing solutions on a
- large variety of platforms, especially when the
- communication-to-computation ratio is not very high (the difficult
- case).\n
- ftp://ftp.ens-lyon.fr/pub/LIP/Rapports/RR/RR2002/RR2002-36.ps.gz
-\li <b>On-line Parallel Tomography</b>\n
- by <em>Shava Smallen</em>\n
- Masters Thesis, UCSD, May 2001
-\li <b>Applying Scheduling and Tuning to On-line Parallel Tomography </b>\n
- by <em>Shava Smallen, Henri Casanova, Francine Berman</em>\n
- in Proceedings of Supercomputing 2001
-\li <b>Heuristics for Scheduling Parameter Sweep applications in
- Grid environments</b>\n
- by <em>Henri Casanova, Arnaud Legrand, Dmitrii Zagorodnov and
- Francine Berman</em>\n
- in Proceedings of the 9th Heterogeneous Computing workshop
- (HCW'2000), pp349-363.
*/
