TranSim: A Simulation Framework for Cache-Enabled Transparent Computing Systems

Abstract

The growing demand on the performance of transparent computing systems requires good cache schemes in order to overcome the prolonged network latency. However, evaluating cache schemes, especially measuring the performance of a transparent computing system with particular cache scheme remains challenging. This is because neither method is available to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the cache schemes in transparent computing, nor the simulator has been developed to measure the system performance under particular cache schemes. In this paper, we propose TranSim, a full-featured, high-performance simulation framework for transparent computing. For the first time, TranSim introduces a methodology to evaluate the performance of multi-level cache hierarchies in transparent computing under different cache configurations and cache replacement policies. TranSim can also demonstrate the behavior and performance of the entire transparent computing system rather than only the cache miss/hit rate. Using TranSim, the system designer can quickly evaluate the effectiveness of cache schemes along with the system performance. We construct several experiments to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of TranSim. Results show that TranSim can accurately output the performance of both the cache hierarchy and the entire transparent computing system.