Performance analysis of SPMD algorithms on a network of workstations with virtual shared memory

We present a simple model to analyze and predict the performance of a given parallel application on a heterogeneous network of workstations with Virtual Shared Memory (VSM). Particularly, we deal with a switched Ethernet-based network and we use Network Linda as parallel framework; our analysis can however be applied to other virtual shared memory environments. Simulated and experimental results are in good agreement and the proposed method allows to evaluate how the efficiency varies with the task granularity and the degree of heterogeneity of the network.