<center>
\htmlonly
-<img align=center src="simgrid_logo.png" alt="SimGrid"><br>
+<table width="100%">
+ <tr>
+ <td valign="middle" align="left">
+ <img src="simgrid_logo_2011.png" alt="SimGrid - Scalable simulation of distributed systems, ranging from grids to peer-to-peer systems" />
+ </td>
+ <td valign="middle" align="left">
+\endhtmlonly
+\htmlinclude .index.doc.toc
+\htmlonly
+ </td>
+ </tr>
+</table>
\endhtmlonly
</center>
-\section overview Overview
-
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
+
+ - The official webpage is <a href="http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/">simgrid.gforge.inria.fr</a>.
+ - The Frequently Asked Questions are <a href="http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/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="http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/download.php">here</a>.
+<br>
+
+<hr>
-\section people People
+\section overview Overview of the toolkit components
+
+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
+<br><b>Relationships between the SimGrid components (click to jump to API)</b>
+</center>
+\endhtmlonly
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_END______ --!> \endhtmlonly
+
+\subsection overview_envs Programmation environments layer
+
+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
+ historical name). It was designed exactly to that extend and should allow
+ you to build easily rather realistic multi-agents simulation. Yet,
+ realism is not the main goal of this environment and the most annoying
+ technical issues of real platforms are masked here. Check the \ref
+ MSG_API section for more information.
+
+ - If you want to study the behaviour of a MPI application using emulation
+ technics, you should have a look at the <b>\ref SMPI_API</b> (Simulated
+ MPI) programming environment. Unfortunately, this work is still underway.
+ Check the \ref SMPI_API section for more information.
+
+ - If you want to develop a real distributed application, then you may find
+ <b>\ref GRAS_API</b> (Grid Reality And Simulation) useful. This is an API
+ for the realization of distributed applications.
+ \n\n
+ Moreover, there is two implementations of this API: one on top of the
+ SURF (allowing to develop and test your application within the comfort of
+ the simulator) and another suited for deployment on real platforms
+ (allowing the resulting application to be highly portable and extremely
+ efficient).
+ \n\n
+ Even if you do not plan to run your code for real, you may want to switch
+ to GRAS if you intend to use MSG in a very intensive way (e.g. for
+ simulating a peer-to-peer environment).
+ \n\n
+ See the \ref GRAS_API section for more details.
+
+If your favorite programming environment/model is not there (BSP,
+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.
+
+\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>. 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.
+
+\subsection overview_fondation Base layer
+
+The base 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, \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.
+
+See the \ref XBT_API section for more details.
+
+
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_BEGIN______ --!> \endhtmlonly
+<br>
+The SimGrid software package can be downloaded from
+<a href="http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/download.php">here</a>.<br>
+
+If you are interested in the history of SimGrid and in current and planned development,
+you can find out more <a href="http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/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>.
+
+\htmlonly <!-- ______BODY_END______ --!> \endhtmlonly
+
+<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>
+</center>
+\endhtmlonly
-The authors of SimGrid are:
-
-\author Henri Casanova <casanova@cs.ucsd.edu>
-\author Arnaud Legrand <arnaud.legrand@imag.fr>
-\author Martin Quinson <martin.quinson@tuxfamily.org>
-
-\section intro Available Softwares
-
-The SimGrid toolkit is composed of different modules :
-
-\li XBT (eXtensive Bundle of Tools) is a portable library with many
- convenient portable datastructures (vectors, hashtables, heap,
- contexts ...). Most other SimGrid modules rely on it.
-
-\li SURF provides the core functionnalities to simulate a virtual
- platform. It is very low-level and is not intended to be used as
- such but rather to serve as a basis for higher-level simulators
- (like MSG, GRAS, SMPI, ...). It relies on a fast max min linear
- solver.
-
-\li MSG is a simulator built using the previous modules. It aims at
- being realistic and is application-oriented. It is the software layer
- of choice for building simulation with multiple scheduling agents.
-
-\li GRAS (<em>not functionnal yet</em>) is an ongoing project to emulate virtual virtual platforms
- through SURF. As a consequence a code developped using the GRAS
- framework is able to run as well in the real-world as in the
- simulator. The resulting code is very portable and highly interoperable while
- remaining very efficient. Even if you do not plan to run your code for real,
- you may want to switch to GRAS if you intend to use MSG in a very intensive way
- (e.g. for simulating a peer-to-peer environment).
-
-\li SMPI (<em>not functionnal yet</em>) is an ongoing project to enable MPI code to run on top of a
- virtual platform through SURF. It follows the same principle as
- the ones used in GRAS but is specific to MPI applications.
-
-The section \ref publications contains links to papers that provide
-additional details on the project as well as validation and
-experimental results.
-
-The software can be downloaded from <a href="http://gcl.ucsd.edu/SimGrid/dl/">here</a>.
-
-\section install Installation
-
-Simply type
- \li <tt>./configure</tt>
- \li <tt>make all install</tt>
-
-If you are not familiar with compiling C files under UNIX and using
-libraries, you will find some more informations in Section \ref
-faq.
-
-\section documentation API Documentation
-
-The API of all different modules is described in \ref SimGrid_API.
-
-See \ref SimGrid_examples for an introduction on the way to use these modules.
-
-\section users_contributers Users / Contributers
-
-\subsection contributers Contributers
-
- \li Loris Marchal: wrote the new algorithm for simulation TCP
- bandwidth-sharing.
- \li 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.
- \li Clément Menier and Marc Perache : wrote a first prototype of
- the MSG interface during a project at ENS-Lyon (jan 2002).
- \li Dmitrii Zagorodnov : wrote some parts of the first version
- of SimGrid (1999).
-
-\subsection mailinglist User Mailing List
-
- We have a <a href=https://listes.ens-lyon.fr/wws/info/simgrid2-users> mailing list for
- SimGrid users</a>.<p>
-
-\section publications Publications
-
-\subsection simulation About simulation
-
-\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.
-
-
-\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
-
-
-\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
-
-\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
-
-\subsection research Papers using SimGrid results
-
-\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.
*/
