-/*! \page platform Platform description
+/*! \page platform Platform Description
\htmlinclude .platform.doc.toc
application, and finally it needs something to know where to deploy what.
For the latest 2 entries, you have basically 2 ways to give it as an input :
-\li You can program it, either using the Lua console or if you're using MSG some
-of its platform and deployments functions. If you want to use it, please refer
-to its doc.
+\li You can program it, either using the Lua console (\ref MSG_Lua_funct) or if you're using MSG some
+of its platform and deployments functions(\ref msg_simulation). If you want to use it, please refer
+to its doc. (you can also check the section \ref pf_flexml_bypassing but this is strongly deprecated, as there is a new way to do it properly, but not yet documented).
\li You can use two XML files: a platform description file and a deployment
description one.
<b>host</b> attributes :
\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the host to be used when referring to it.
-\li <b>power (mandatory)</b>:the peak number FLOPS the CPU can manage. Expressed in flop/s.
-\li <b>core</b>: The number of core of this host. If setted, the power gives the power of one core.
+\li <b>power (mandatory)</b>:the peak number FLOPS the CPU can manage. Expressed in flop/s.
+\li <b>core</b>: The number of core of this host. If setted, the power gives the power of one core. The specified computing power will be available to up to 6 sequential
+tasks without sharing. If more tasks are placed on this host, the
+resource will be shared accordingly. For example, if you schedule 12
+tasks on the host, each will get half of the computing power. Please
+note that although sound, this model were never scientifically
+assessed. Please keep this fact in mind when using it.
+
\li <b>availability</b>: specify if the percentage of power available.
\li <b>availability_file</b>: Allow you to use a file as input. This file will contain availability traces for this computer. The syntax of this file is defined below. Possible values : absolute or relative path, syntax similar to the one in use on your system.
\li <b>state</b>: the computer state, as in : is that computer ON or OFF. Possible values : "ON" or "OFF".
\li <b>state_file</b>: Same mechanism as availability_file, similar syntax for value.
\li <b>coordinates</b>: you'll have to give it if you choose the vivaldi, coordinate-based routing model for the AS the host belongs to. More details about it in the P2P coordinate based section.
+An host can contain some <b>mount</b> that defines mounting points between some storage resource and the <b>host</b>. Please refer to the storage doc for more information.
+
An host can also contain the <b>prop</b> tag. the prop tag allows you to define additional informations on this host following the attribute/value schema. You may want to use it to give information to the tool you use for rendering your simulation, for example.
<b>host example</b>
\subsubsection pf_peer peer
A <b>peer</b> represents a peer, as in Peer-to-Peer (P2P). Basically, as cluster, <b>A PEER IS INTERNALLY INTERPRETED AS AN \<AS\></b>. It's just a kind of shortcut that does the following :
-\li It creates an host that has coordinates
+\li It creates an host
\li Two links : one for download and one for upload. This is convenient to use and simulate stuff under the last mile model (as ADSL peers).
+\li It creates a gateway that serve as entry point for this peer zone. This router has coordinates.
<b>peer</b> attributes :
\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the peer to be used when referring to it.
-\li <b>power CDATA (mandatory)</b>:
-\li <b>bw_in CDATA (mandatory)</b>:
-\li <b>bw_out CDATA (mandatory)</b>:
-\li <b>lat CDATA (mandatory)</b>:
-\li <b>coordinates</b>:
+\li <b>power CDATA (mandatory)</b>: as in host
+\li <b>bw_in CDATA (mandatory)</b>: bandwidth in.
+\li <b>bw_out CDATA (mandatory)</b>:bandwidth out.
+\li <b>lat CDATA (mandatory)</b>: Latency for in and out links.
+\li <b>coordinates</b>: coordinates of the gateway for this peer.
\li <b>sharing_policy</b>: sharing policy for links. Can be SHARED or FULLDUPLEX, FULLDUPLEX is the default. See <b>link</b> description for details.
\li <b>availability_file</b>: availability file for the peer. Same as host availability file. See <b>host</b> description for details.
\li <b>state_file </b>: state file for the peer. Same as host state file. See <b>host</b> description for details.
\endverbatim
<b>Expressing sharing policy</b>
-By default a network link is SHARED, that is if more than one flow go through
+By default a network link is SHARED, that is if more than one flow go through
a link, each gets a share of the available bandwidth similar to the share TCP connections offers.
-Conversely if a link is defined as a FATPIPE, each flow going through this link will get all the available bandwidth, whatever the number of flows. The FATPIPE
-behavior allows to describe big backbones that won't affect performances (except latency). Finally a link can be considered as FULLDUPLEX, XXX?
+Conversely if a link is defined as a FATPIPE, each flow going through this link will get all the available bandwidth, whatever the number of flows. The FATPIPE
+behavior allows to describe big backbones that won't affect performances (except latency). Finally a link can be considered as FULLDUPLEX, that means that in the simulator, 2 links (one named UP and the other DOWN) will be created for each link, so as the transfers from one side to the other will interact similarly as TCP when ACK returning packets circulate on the other direction. More discussion about it is available in <b>link_ctn</b> description.
\verbatim
<link id="SWITCH" bandwidth="125000000" latency="5E-5" sharing_policy="FATPIPE" />
<b>Expressing dynamicity and failures</b>
- As for hosts, it is possible to declare links whose state, bandwidth or latency change over the time. In this case, the bandwidth and latency attributes are respectively replaced by the bandwidth file and latency file attributes and the corresponding text files.
+ As for hosts, it is possible to declare links whose state, bandwidth or latency change over the time. In this case, the bandwidth and latency attributes are respectively replaced by the bandwidth file and latency file attributes and the corresponding text files.
\verbatim
<link id="LINK1" state_file="link1.fail" bandwidth="80000000" latency=".0001" bandwidth_file="link1.bw" latency_file="link1.lat" />
\endverbatim
-It has to be noted that even if the syntax is the same, the semantic of bandwidth and latency trace files
-differs from that of host availability files. Those files do not express availability as a fraction of the available
+It has to be noted that even if the syntax is the same, the semantic of bandwidth and latency trace files
+differs from that of host availability files. Those files do not express availability as a fraction of the available
capacity but directly in bytes per seconds for the bandwidth and in seconds for the latency. This is because
most tools allowing to capture traces on real platforms (such as NWS ) express their results this way.
at 100µs for one second.
<b>link</b> attributes :
-\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the cluster to be used when referring to it.
+\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the link to be used when referring to it.
\li <b>bandwidth (mandatory)</b>: bandwidth for the link.
-\li <b>lat (mandatory)</b>: latency for the link.
+\li <b>lat </b>: latency for the link. Default is 0.0.
\li <b>sharing_policy</b>: sharing policy for the link.
\li <b>state</b>: Allow you to to set link as ON or OFF. Default is ON.
\li <b>bandwidth_file</b>: Allow you to use a file as input for bandwidth.
\subsection pf_storage Storage
+<b>Note : This is a prototype version that should evolve quickly, this is just some doc valuable only at the time of writing this doc</b>
+This section describes the storage management under SimGrid ; nowadays it's only usable with MSG. It relies basically on linux-like concepts. You also may want to have a look to its corresponding section in \ref m_file_management ; functions access are organized as a POSIX-like interface.
+
+\subsubsection pf_sto_conc Storage Main concepts
+Basically there is 3 different entities to know :
+\li the <b>storage_type</b>: here you define some kind of storage that you will instantiate many type on your platform. Think of it like a definition of throughput of a specific disk.
+\li the <b>storage</b>: instance of a <b>storage_type</b>. Defines a new storage of <b>storage_type</b>
+\li the <b>mount</b>: says that the storage is located into this specific resource.
+
+the content of a storage has to be defined in a content file that contains the content. The path to this file has to be passed within the <b>content</b> attribute . Here is a way to generate it:
+\verbatim
+find /path/you/want -type f -exec ls -l {} \; 2>/dev/null > ./content.txt
+\endverbatim
+
+\subsubsection pf_sto_sttp storage_type
+
+
+<b>storage_type</b> attributes :
+\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the storage_type to be used when referring to it.
+\li <b>model (mandatory)</b>: Unused for now by the simulator (but mandatory, ok)
+\li <b>content</b>: default value 0. The file containing the disk content. (may be moved soon or later to <b>storage</b> tag.
+
+The tag must contains some predefined prop, as may do some other resources tags. This should moved to attributes soon or later.
+<b>storage_type</b> mandatory <b>prop</b> :
+\li <b>Bwrite</b>: value in B/s. Write throughput
+\li <b>Bread</b>: value in B/s. Read throughput
+\li <b>Bconnexion</b>: value in B/s. Connection throughput (i.e. the throughput of the storage connector).
+
+\subsubsection pf_sto_st storage
+
+<b>storage_type</b> attributes :
+\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the storage to be used when referring to it.
+\li <b>typeId (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the storage_type that this storage belongs to.
-At the time of writing this doc, a storage protoype has been implemented. While it is not stable, no doc for it, sorry.
+
+\subsubsection pf_sto_mo mount
+
+
+<b>mount</b> attributes :
+\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the id of the <b>storage</b> that must be mounted on that computer.
+\li <b>name (mandatory)</b>: the name that will be the logical reference to this disk (the mount point).
+
+\subsubsection pf_sto_mst mstorage
+<b>Note : unused for now</b>
+<b>mstorage</b> attributes :
+\li <b>typeId (mandatory)</b>: the id of the <b>storage</b> that must be mounted on that computer.
+\li <b>name (mandatory)</b>: the name that will be the logical reference to this disk (the mount point).
\section pf_routing Routing
-In order to run fast, it has been chosen to use static routing within SimGrid. By static, it means that it is calculated once, and will not change during execution. We chose to do that because it is rare to have a real deficience of a resource ; most of the time, a communication fails because the links are too overloaded, and so your connection stops before the time out, or because the computer at the other end is not answering.
+In order to run fast, it has been chosen to use static routing within SimGrid. By static, it means that it is calculated once (or almost), and will not change during execution. We chose to do that because it is rare to have a real deficience of a resource ; most of the time, a communication fails because the links are too overloaded, and so your connection stops before the time out, or because the computer at the other end is not answering.
We also chose to use shortests paths algorithms in order to emulate routing. Doing so is consistent with the reality: RIP, OSPF, BGP are all calculating shortest paths. They have some convergence time, but at the end, so when the platform is stable (and this should be the moment you want to simulate something using SimGrid) your packets will follow the shortest paths.
Routers are naturally an important concept in GTNetS or ns-3 since the way they run the packet routing algorithms is actually simulated. Instead, the
SimGrid’s analytical models aggregate the routing time with the transfer time.
-Rebuilding a graph representation only from the route information turns to be a very difficult task, because
+Rebuilding a graph representation only from the route information turns to be a very difficult task, because
of the missing information about how routes intersect. That is why we introduced a \<router\> tag, which is
simply used to express these intersection points. The only attribute accepted by this tag an id.
It is important to understand that the \<router\> tag is only used to provide topological information.
\subsubsection pf_rm_sh Shortest-path based models
Here is the complete list of such models, that computes routes using classic shortest-paths algorithms. How to choose the best suited algorithm is discussed later in the section devoted to it.
-\li <b>Floyd</b>: Floyd routing data
-\li <b>Dijkstra</b>: Dijkstra routing data
-\li <b>DijkstraCache</b>: Dijkstra routing data
+\li <b>Floyd</b>: Floyd routing data. Pre-calculates all routes once.
+\li <b>Dijkstra</b>: Dijkstra routing data ,calculating routes when necessary.
+\li <b>DijkstraCache</b>: Dijkstra routing data. Handle some cache for already calculated routes.
+
+All those shortest-path models are instanciated the same way. Here are some example of it:
Floyd example :
\verbatim
Dijsktra example :
\verbatim
-XXX?
+ <AS id="AS_2" routing="Dijsktra">
+ <host id="AS_2_host1" power="1000000000"/>
+ <host id="AS_2_host2" power="1000000000"/>
+ <host id="AS_2_host3" power="1000000000"/>
+ <link id="AS_2_link1" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <link id="AS_2_link2" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <link id="AS_2_link3" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <link id="AS_2_link4" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <router id="central_router"/>
+ <router id="AS_2_gateway"/>
+ <!-- routes providing topological information -->
+ <route src="central_router" dst="AS_2_host1"><link_ctn id="AS_2_link1"/></route>
+ <route src="central_router" dst="AS_2_host2"><link_ctn id="AS_2_link2"/></route>
+ <route src="central_router" dst="AS_2_host3"><link_ctn id="AS_2_link3"/></route>
+ <route src="central_router" dst="AS_2_gateway"><link_ctn id="AS_2_link4"/></route>
+ </AS>
\endverbatim
DijsktraCache example :
\verbatim
-XXX?
+<AS id="AS_2" routing="DijsktraCache">
+ <host id="AS_2_host1" power="1000000000"/>
+ ...
+(platform unchanged compared to upper example)
\endverbatim
\subsubsection pf_rm_me Manually-entered route models
</AS>
\endverbatim
-The example upper contains $1. Those $1 are evaluated as follow XXX?
+The example upper contains $1src and $1dst. It's simply a reference to string matching regexp enclosed by "()" within respectively <b>src</b> and <b>dst</b> attributes. If they were more than 1 "()", then you could referer to it as $2src, $3src and so on.
\subsubsection pf_rm_sf Simple/fast models
\li <b>none</b>: No routing (Unless you know what you are doing, avoid using this mode in combination with a non Constant network model).
None Example :
\verbatim
-XXX?
-\endverbatim
+<AS id="exitAS" routing="none">
+ <router id="exit_gateway"/>
+</AS>\endverbatim
\li <b>Vivaldi</b>: Vivaldi routing, so when you want to use coordinates. See the corresponding section P2P below for details.
\li <b>Cluster</b>: Cluster routing, specific to cluster tag, should not be used, except internally.
-\subsection pf_asro ASroute
+\subsection ps_dec Defining routes
+
+The principle of route definition is the same for the 4 available tags for doing it. Those for tags are:
+
+\li <b>route</b>: to define route between host/router
+\li <b>ASroute</b>: to define route between AS
+\li <b>bypassRoute</b>: to bypass normal routes as calculated by the network model between host/router
+\li <b>bypassASroute</b>: same as bypassRoute, but for AS
+
+Basically all those tags will contain an (ordered) list of references to link that compose the route you want to define.
+
+Consider the example below:
+
+\verbatim
+<route src="Alice" dst="Bob">
+ <link_ctn id="link1"/>
+ <link_ctn id="link2"/>
+ <link_ctn id="link3"/>
+ </route>
+\endverbatim
+
+The route here fom host Alice to Bob will be first link1, then link2, and finally link3. What about the reverse route ? <b>route</b> and <b>ASroute</b> have an optional attribute <b>symmetrical</b>, that can be either YES or NO. YES means that the reverse route is the same route in the inverse order, and is setted to YES by default. Note that this is not the case for bypass*Route, as it is more probable that you want to bypass only one default route.
+
+For an ASroute, things are just sligthly more complicated, as you have to give the id of the gateway which is inside the AS you're talking about you want to access ... So it looks like this :
+
+
+\verbatim
+ <ASroute src="AS1" dst="AS2"
+ gw_src="router1" gw_dst="router2">
+ <link_ctn id="link1"/>
+ </ASroute>
+\endverbatim
+
+gw == gateway, so when any message are trying to go from AS1 to AS2, it means that it must pass through router1 to get out of the AS, then pass through link1, and get into AS2 by being received by router2. router1 must belong to AS1 and router2 must belong to AS2.
+
+\subsubsection pf_linkctn link_ctn
+
+a <b>link_ctn</b> is the tag that is used in order to reference a <b>link</b> in a route. Its id is the link id it refers to.
+
+<b>link_ctn</b> attributes :
+\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: Id of the link this tag refers to
+\li <b>direction</b>: if the link referenced by <b>id</b> has been declared as FULLDUPLEX, this is used to indicate in which direction the route you're defining is going through this link. Possible values "UP" or "DOWN".
+
+\subsubsection pf_asro ASroute
ASroute tag purpose is to let people write manually their routes between AS. It's usefull when you're in Full or Rule-based model.
</AS>
\endverbatim
-\subsection pf_ro route
+\subsubsection pf_ro route
The principle is the same as ASroute : <b>route</b> contains list of links that are in the path between src and dst, except that it is for routes between a src that can be either <b>host</b> or \b router and a dst that can be either <b>host</b> or \b router. Usefull for Full and RuleBased, as well as for the shortest-paths based models, where you have to give topological informations.
\endverbatim
Note that when using route to give topological information, you have to give routes with one link only in it, as SimGrid needs to know which host are at the end of the link.
-\subsection pf_byro bypassRoute
-
-As said before, once you choose a model, it (if so) calculates routes for you. But maybe you want to define some of your routes, which will be specific. You may also want to bypass some routes defined in lower level AS at an upper stage : <b>bypassRoute</b> is the tag you're looking for. It allows to bypass routes defined between already defined between AS (if you want to bypass route for a specific host, you should just XXX?). The principle is the same as ASroute : <b>bypassRoute</b> contains list of links that are in the path between src and dst.
+\subsubsection pf_byro bypassASroute
+<b>Note : bypassASroute and bypassRoute are under rewriting to perform better ; so you may not use it yet</b>
+As said before, once you choose a model, it (if so) calculates routes for you. But maybe you want to define some of your routes, which will be specific. You may also want to bypass some routes defined in lower level AS at an upper stage : <b>bypassASroute</b> is the tag you're looking for. It allows to bypass routes defined between already defined between AS (if you want to bypass route for a specific host, you should just use byPassRoute). The principle is the same as ASroute : <b>bypassASroute</b> contains list of links that are in the path between src and dst.
-<b>bypassRoute</b> attributes :
+<b>bypassASroute</b> attributes :
\li <b>src (mandatory)</b>: the source AS id.
\li <b>dst (mandatory)</b>: the destination AS id.
\li <b>gw_src (mandatory)</b>: the gateway to be used within the AS. Can be any <b>host</b> or \b router defined into the \b src AS or into one of the AS it includes.
\li <b>gw_dst (mandatory)</b>: the gateway to be used within the AS. Can be any <b>host</b> or \b router defined into the \b dst AS or into one of the AS it includes.
\li <b>symmetrical</b>: if the route is symmetric, the reverse route will be the opposite of the one defined. Can be either YES or NO, default is YES.
-<b>bypassRoute Example</b>
+<b>bypassASroute Example</b>
\verbatim
+ <bypassASRoute src="my_cluster_1" dst="my_cluster_2"
+ gw_src="my_cluster_1_router"
+ gw_dst="my_cluster_2_router">
+ <link_ctn id="link_tmp"/>
+ </bypassASroute>
+\endverbatim
+
+\subsubsection pf_byro bypassRoute
+<b>Note : bypassASRoute and bypassRoute are under rewriting to perform better ; so you may not use it yet</b>
+As said before, once you choose a model, it (if so) calculates routes for you. But maybe you want to define some of your routes, which will be specific. You may also want to bypass some routes defined in lower level AS at an upper stage : <b>bypassRoute</b> is the tag you're looking for. It allows to bypass routes defined between <b>host/router</b>. The principle is the same as route : <b>bypassRoute</b> contains list of links references of links that are in the path between src and dst.
+<b>bypassRoute</b> attributes :
+\li <b>src (mandatory)</b>: the source AS id.
+\li <b>dst (mandatory)</b>: the destination AS id.
+\li <b>symmetrical</b>: if the route is symmetric, the reverse route will be the opposite of the one defined. Can be either YES or NO, default is YES.
+
+<b>bypassRoute Example</b>
+\verbatim
+<b>bypassRoute Example</b>
+\verbatim
+ <bypassRoute src="host_1" dst="host_2">
+ <link_ctn id="link_tmp"/>
+ </bypassRoute>
\endverbatim
+
\subsection pb_baroex Basic Routing Example
-Let's say you have an AS named AS_Big that contains two other AS, AS_1 and AS_2. If you want to make an host (h1) from AS_1 with another one (h2) from AS_2 and you did not have choosen to use some routing model that compute routes automatically, then you'll have to proceed as follow:
+Let's say you have an AS named AS_Big that contains two other AS, AS_1 and AS_2. If you want to make an host (h1) from AS_1 with another one (h2) from AS_2 then you'll have to proceed as follow:
\li First, you have to ensure that a route is defined from h1 to the AS_1's exit gateway and from h2 to AS_2's exit gateway.
-\li Then, you'll have to define a route between AS_1 to AS_2. As those AS are both resources belonging to AS_Big, then it has to be done at AS_big level. To define such a route, you have to give the source AS (AS_1), the destination AS (AS_2), and their respective gateway (as the route is effectively defined between those two entry/exit points). Elements of this route can only be elements belonging to AS_Big, so links and routers in this route should be defined inside AS_Big.
+\li Then, you'll have to define a route between AS_1 to AS_2. As those AS are both resources belonging to AS_Big, then it has to be done at AS_big level. To define such a route, you have to give the source AS (AS_1), the destination AS (AS_2), and their respective gateway (as the route is effectively defined between those two entry/exit points). Elements of this route can only be elements belonging to AS_Big, so links and routers in this route should be defined inside AS_Big. If you choose some shortest-path model, this route will be computed automatically.
As said before, there are mainly 2 tags for routing :
\li <b>ASroute</b>: to define routes between two <b>AS</b>
\li <b>route</b>: to define routes between two <b>host/router</b>
-As we are dealing with routes between AS, it means that those we'll have some definition at AS_Big level. Let consider AS_1 and AS_2 contains 1 host, 1 link and one router.
+As we are dealing with routes between AS, it means that those we'll have some definition at AS_Big level. Let consider AS_1 contains 1 host, 1 link and one router and AS_2 3 hosts, 4 links and one router. There will be a central router, and a cross-like topology. At the end of the crosses arms, you'll find the 3 hosts and the router that will act as a gateway. We have to define routes inside those two AS. Let say that AS_1 contains full routes, and AS_2 contains some Floyd routing (as we don't want to bother with defining all routes). As we're using some shortest path algorithms to route into AS_2, we'll then have to define some <b>route</b> to gives some topological information to SimGrid. Here is a file doing it all :
+
+\verbatim
+<AS id="AS_Big" routing="Dijsktra">
+ <AS id="AS_1" routing="Full">
+ <host id="AS_1_host1" power="1000000000"/>
+ <link id="AS_1_link" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <router id="AS_1_gateway"/>
+ <route src="AS_1_host1" dst="AS_1_gateway">
+ <link_ctn id="AS_1_link"/>
+ </route>
+ </AS>
+ <AS id="AS_2" routing="Floyd">
+ <host id="AS_2_host1" power="1000000000"/>
+ <host id="AS_2_host2" power="1000000000"/>
+ <host id="AS_2_host3" power="1000000000"/>
+ <link id="AS_2_link1" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <link id="AS_2_link2" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <link id="AS_2_link3" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <link id="AS_2_link4" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+ <router id="central_router"/>
+ <router id="AS_2_gateway"/>
+ <!-- routes providing topological information -->
+ <route src="central_router" dst="AS_2_host1"><link_ctn id="AS_2_link1"/></route>
+ <route src="central_router" dst="AS_2_host2"><link_ctn id="AS_2_link2"/></route>
+ <route src="central_router" dst="AS_2_host3"><link_ctn id="AS_2_link3"/></route>
+ <route src="central_router" dst="AS_2_gateway"><link_ctn id="AS_2_link4"/></route>
+ </AS>
+ <link id="backbone" bandwidth="1250000000" latency="5E-4"/>
+
+ <ASroute src="AS_1" dst="AS_2"
+ gw_src="AS_1_gateway"
+ gw_dst="AS_2_gateway">
+ <link_ctn id="backbone"/>
+ </ASroute>
+</AS>
+\endverbatim
\section pf_other_tags Tags not (directly) describing the platform
\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the config to be used when referring to it.
-<b>config</b> tag only purpose is to include <b>prop</b> tags. Valid id are basically the same as the list of possible parameters you can use by command line, except that "/" are used for namespace definition.
+<b>config</b> tag only purpose is to include <b>prop</b> tags. Valid id are basically the same as the list of possible parameters you can use by command line, except that "/" are used for namespace definition. See the \ref options config and options page for more information.
<b>config example</b>
\subsection pf_rand random
-Not yet in use XXX?
+Not yet in use, and possibly subject to huge modifications.
\subsection pf_incl include
-Not yet in use XXX?
+<b>include</b> tag allows to import into a file platform parts located in another file. This is done with the intention to help people combine their different AS and provide new platforms. Those files should contains XML part that contains either <b>include,cluster,peer,AS,trace,trace_connect</b> tags.
+
+<b>include</b> attributes :
+\li <b>file (mandatory)</b>: filename of the file to include. Possible values : absolute or relative path, syntax similar to the one in use on your system.
+
+<b>Note</b> : due to some obscure technical reasons, you have to open and close tag in order to let it work.
+<b>include Example</b>
+\verbatim
+<?xml version='1.0'?>
+<!DOCTYPE platform SYSTEM "http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/simgrid.dtd">
+<platform version="3">
+ <AS id="main" routing="Full">
+ <include file="clusterA.xml"></include>
+ <include file="clusterB.xml"></include>
+ </AS>
+</platform>
+\endverbatim
+
+\subsection pf_tra trace and trace_connect
+Both tags are an alternate way to passe availability, state, and so on files to entity. Instead of refering to the file directly in the host, link, or cluster tag, you proceed by defining a trace with an id corresponding to a file, later an host/link/cluster, and finally using trace_connect you say that the file trace must be used by the entity. Get it ? Let's have a look at an example :
+
+\verbatim
+<AS id="AS0" routing="Full">
+ <host id="bob" power="1000000000"/>
+</AS>
+ <trace id="myTrace" file="bob.trace" periodicity="1.0"/>
+ <trace_connect trace="myTrace" element="bob" kind="POWER"/>
+\endverbatim
+
+All constraints you have is that <b>trace_connect</b> is after <b>trace</b> and <b>host</b> definitions.
+
+
+<b>trace</b> attributes :
+\li <b>id (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the trace to be used when referring to it.
+\li <b>file</b>: filename of the file to include. Possible values : absolute or relative path, syntax similar to the one in use on your system.
+\li <b>trace periodicity (mandatory)</b>: trace periodicity, same definition as in hosts (see upper for details).
+
+<b>trace_connect</b> attributes :
+\li <b>kind</b>: the type of trace, possible values <b>HOST_AVAIL|POWER|LINK_AVAIL|BANDWIDTH|LATENCY,</b> default: <b>HOST_AVAIL</b>
+\li <b>trace (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the trace referenced.
+\li <b>element (mandatory)</b>: the identifier of the entity referenced.
+
+
\section pf_hints Hints and tips, or how to write a platform efficiently
</platform>
\endverbatim
+Coordinates are then used to calculate latency between two hosts by calculating the euclidian distance between the two hosts coordinates. The results express the latency in ms.
\subsection pf_wisely Choosing wisely the routing model to use
Choosing wisely the routing model to use can significantly fasten your simulation/save your time when writing the platform/save tremendeous disk space. Here is the list of available model and their characteristics (lookup : time to resolve a route):
\li <b>Full</b>: Full routing data (fast, large memory requirements, fully expressive)
-\li <b>Floyd</b>: Floyd routing data (slow initialization, fast lookup, lesser memory requirements, shortest path routing only)
-\li <b>Dijkstra</b>: Dijkstra routing data (fast initialization, slow lookup, small memory requirements, shortest path routing only)
-\li <b>DijkstraCache</b>: Dijkstra routing data (fast initialization, fast lookup, small memory requirements, shortest path routing only)
-\li <b>none</b>: No routing (usable with Constant network only)
-\li <b>RuleBased</b>: Rule-Based routing data (...)
+\li <b>Floyd</b>: Floyd routing data (slow initialization, fast lookup, lesser memory requirements, shortest path routing only). Calculates all routes at once at the beginning.
+\li <b>Dijkstra</b>: Dijkstra routing data (fast initialization, slow lookup, small memory requirements, shortest path routing only). Calculates a route when necessary.
+\li <b>DijkstraCache</b>: Dijkstra routing data (fast initialization, fast lookup, small memory requirements, shortest path routing only). Same as Dijkstra, except it handles a cache for latest used routes.
+\li <b>none</b>: No routing (usable with Constant network only). Defines that there is no routes, so if you try to determine a route without constant network within this AS, SimGrid will raie an exception.
+\li <b>RuleBased</b>: Rule-Based routing data (fast initialisation, relatively slow lookup, moderate memory requirements, fully expressive): uses regexp to define routes;
\li <b>Vivaldi</b>: Vivaldi routing, so when you want to use coordinates
\li <b>Cluster</b>: Cluster routing, specific to cluster tag, should not be used.
\subsection pf_switch Hey, I want to describe a switch but there is no switch tag !
-Actually we did not include swith tag, ok. But when you're trying to simulate a switch, the only major impact it has when you're using fluid model (and SimGrid uses fluid model unless you activate GTNetS or ns-3 mode) is the impact of the upper limit of the switch motherboard speed that will eventually be reached if you're using intensively your switch. So, the switch impact is similar to a link one. That's why we are used to describe a switch using a link tag (as a link is not an edge by a hyperedge, you can connect more than 2 other links to it).
+Actually we did not include swith tag, ok. But when you're trying to simulate a switch, the only major impact it has when you're using fluid model (and SimGrid uses fluid model unless you activate GTNetS, ns-3, or constant network mode) is the impact of the upper limit of the switch motherboard speed that will eventually be reached if you're using intensively your switch. So, the switch impact is similar to a link one. That's why we are used to describe a switch using a link tag (as a link is not an edge by a hyperedge, you can connect more than 2 other links to it).
+\subsection pf_platform_multipath How to express multipath routing in platform files?
+
+It is unfortunately impossible to express the fact that there is more
+than one routing path between two given hosts. Let's consider the
+following platform file:
+
+\verbatim
+<route src="A" dst="B">
+ <link_ctn id="1"/>
+</route>
+<route src="B" dst="C">
+ <link_ctn id="2"/>
+</route>
+<route src="A" dst="C">
+ <link_ctn id="3"/>
+</route>
+\endverbatim
+
+Although it is perfectly valid, it does not mean that data traveling
+from A to C can either go directly (using link 3) or through B (using
+links 1 and 2). It simply means that the routing on the graph is not
+trivial, and that data do not following the shortest path in number of
+hops on this graph. Another way to say it is that there is no implicit
+in these routing descriptions. The system will only use the routes you
+declare (such as <route src="A" dst="C"><link_ctn
+id="3"/></route>), without trying to build new routes by aggregating
+the provided ones.
+
+You are also free to declare platform where the routing is not
+symmetric. For example, add the following to the previous file:
+
+\verbatim
+<route src="C" dst="A">
+ <link_ctn id="2"/>
+ <link_ctn id="1"/>
+</route>
+\endverbatim
+
+This makes sure that data from C to A go through B where data from A
+to C go directly. Don't worry about realism of such settings since
+we've seen ways more weird situation in real settings (in fact, that's
+the realism of very regular platforms which is questionable, but
+that's another story).
+
+\section pf_flexml_bypassing Bypassing the XML parser with your own C functions
+<b>NOTE THAT THIS DOCUMENTATION, WHILE STILL WORKING, IS STRONGLY DEPRECATED</b>
+
+So you want to bypass the XML files parser, uh? Maybe doing some parameter
+sweep experiments on your simulations or so? This is possible, and
+it's not even really difficult (well. Such a brutal idea could be
+harder to implement). Here is how it goes.
+
+For this, you have to first remember that the XML parsing in SimGrid is done
+using a tool called FleXML. Given a DTD, this gives a flex-based parser. If
+you want to bypass the parser, you need to provide some code mimicking what
+it does and replacing it in its interactions with the SURF code. So, let's
+have a look at these interactions.
+
+FleXML parser are close to classical SAX parsers. It means that a
+well-formed SimGrid platform XML file might result in the following
+"events":
+
+ - start "platform_description" with attribute version="2"
+ - start "host" with attributes id="host1" power="1.0"
+ - end "host"
+ - start "host" with attributes id="host2" power="2.0"
+ - end "host"
+ - start "link" with ...
+ - end "link"
+ - start "route" with ...
+ - start "link_ctn" with ...
+ - end "link_ctn"
+ - end "route"
+ - end "platform_description"
+
+The communication from the parser to the SURF code uses two means:
+Attributes get copied into some global variables, and a surf-provided
+function gets called by the parser for each event. For example, the event
+ - start "host" with attributes id="host1" power="1.0"
+
+let the parser do something roughly equivalent to:
+\verbatim
+ strcpy(A_host_id,"host1");
+ A_host_power = 1.0;
+ STag_host();
+\endverbatim
+
+In SURF, we attach callbacks to the different events by initializing the
+pointer functions to some the right surf functions. Since there can be
+more than one callback attached to the same event (if more than one
+model is in use, for example), they are stored in a dynar. Example in
+workstation_ptask_L07.c:
+\verbatim
+ /* Adding callback functions */
+ surf_parse_reset_parser();
+ surfxml_add_callback(STag_surfxml_host_cb_list, &parse_cpu_init);
+ surfxml_add_callback(STag_surfxml_prop_cb_list, &parse_properties);
+ surfxml_add_callback(STag_surfxml_link_cb_list, &parse_link_init);
+ surfxml_add_callback(STag_surfxml_route_cb_list, &parse_route_set_endpoints);
+ surfxml_add_callback(ETag_surfxml_link_c_ctn_cb_list, &parse_route_elem);
+ surfxml_add_callback(ETag_surfxml_route_cb_list, &parse_route_set_route);
+
+ /* Parse the file */
+ surf_parse_open(file);
+ xbt_assert(!surf_parse(), "Parse error in %s", file);
+ surf_parse_close();
+\endverbatim
+
+So, to bypass the FleXML parser, you need to write your own version of the
+surf_parse function, which should do the following:
+ - Fill the A_<tag>_<attribute> variables with the wanted values
+ - Call the corresponding STag_<tag>_fun function to simulate tag start
+ - Call the corresponding ETag_<tag>_fun function to simulate tag end
+ - (do the same for the next set of values, and loop)
+
+Then, tell SimGrid that you want to use your own "parser" instead of the stock one:
+\verbatim
+ surf_parse = surf_parse_bypass_environment;
+ MSG_create_environment(NULL);
+ surf_parse = surf_parse_bypass_application;
+ MSG_launch_application(NULL);
+\endverbatim
+
+A set of macros are provided at the end of
+include/surf/surfxml_parse.h to ease the writing of the bypass
+functions. An example of this trick is distributed in the file
+examples/msg/masterslave/masterslave_bypass.c
+
*/
