The modeling power of CINSim: Performance evaluation of interconnection networks

CINSim is a simulator for modeling a great variety of interconnection networks that are composed of switches, buffers, sources, and destinations. This includes regular networks as well as irregular ones. Steady-state simulation can be applied as well as terminating simulation to observe transient behavior of interconnection networks. Due to the involved stochastic events, e.g. randomly generated traffic, confidence levels and estimated precisions are calculated to determine the accuracy of the results. Additionally, quantiles are provided allowing to estimate the distribution of results. Dynamic reconfiguration of interconnection networks can also be modeled by this simulator. Thus, the reconfiguration process can be observed to investigate the particular network behavior during this time interval. CINSim can be executed on parallel or distributed systems to speed up simulations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, CINSim is the first simulator that combines those features with a convenient graphical user interface.