Performance Evaluation and Improvement of Computer Systems

Performance analysis plays an important role in the design, improvement and procurement of new computer systems. Our research group has developed particular expertise in the following areas.

1. Benchmark measurements for cache parameter estimation, with Dr Enyou Li (postdoc) and Yuanhua Yu (MSc student).
2. Image processing for astronomical data, with Ching-Yi Tsai (MSc student).
3. Axle distance estimation for an Automatic Vehicle Classification (AVC) system in Indonesia, with Petrus Mursanto (MSc 1999).
4. Object request brokers, with M. Ta (BTech 1998) and Dr Radu Nicolescu, in collaboration with the HORB group.
5. Models and efficient algorithms for hierarchical memory.
6. The economics of information.

Current and Recent Students

• Ching-yi Tsai (MSc student)
• Yuanhua Yu (MSc student)
• Petrus Mursanto (MSc thesis under assessment)
• Michael (Duc) Ta, BTech Hons (1999) supervised by Dr Radu Nicolescu and co-supervised by Clark Thomborson.

Recent Publications and Selected Conference Submissions

1. Measuring data cache and TLB parameters under Linux, by Clark Thomborson and Yuanhua Yu, to appear in 2000 Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, Society for Computer Simulation International, Vancouver BC, July 2000.
2. The economics of large-memory computations, by Clark Thomborson, Information Processing Letters 66, 263-268, 1998. An earlier version of this paper appears in Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing (Proceedings of the 1997 3rd International Conference), eds. Goscinski, Hobbs, and Zhou, World Scientific, pp. 579-592, December 1997.
3. Data cache parameter measurements, by Li Enyou and Clark Thomborson, to appear in Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Design, pp. 376-383, October 1998. Submission available as gnu-compressed postscript (110 KB).
4. Evaluation of Gigabit Ethernet with Java/HORB, by Y. Yasu, H. Fujii, Y. Igarishi, E. Inoue, H. Kodama, A. Manabe, Y. Watase, Y. Nagasaka, M. Nomachi, S. Hirano, H. Takagi, K. Shudo, T. Arai, L. Sarmenta, C. Thomborson, R. Nicolescu, and M. Duc, to appear in Proceedings of CHEP'98, Chicago USA, September 1998.

Current Software Releases

• random number generation codes for C under BSD Unix.

Related Teaching Activity

• The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis, 415.704(d), Second Semester 1999.