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BSPlab

BSPlab is an environment for experimenting with BSP programs on different computer architectures. Parallel applications are written in Visual C++ using the BSPlib standard for communication and synchronisation. The BSPlib is the result of the standardisation effort within BSP programming made by BSP World Wide. The user may select among various predefined parallel computer architectures. Currently, these are shared memory, distributed shared memory, network of workstations, or multiprocessors with message passing organised in various network topologies. The user may also develop user-defined architectures. The BSP programs are debugged and executed in BSPlab to achieve (simulated) performance measures and hopefully a better understanding of the interplay between hardware (i.e. architecture) and software (i.e. BSP-programs). BSPlab is primarily an environment for studying BSP computations with focus on the impact of algorithms and architectures on BSP program performance. However, BSPlab can also be used as a programming environment for BSP applications developed for real parallel computers running BSPlib.

BSPlab was developed as the diploma work of Haakon Dybdahl and Ivan Uthus from august 1996 to february 1997 under the supervision of Lasse Natvig. The work was done in Group for Computer Architecture and Design, a part of the Department of Computer and Information Science (IDI), at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.

BSPlab Copyright Notice

NEW! A short introduction to BSPlab 16 slides

What is BSPlab? (short summary)
Documentation
Download instructions and installation guide
How to give feedback, mailing list
Future plans
Using BSPlab, a very simple example
Pointers to available BSP-programs
Known bugs, suggested fixes, (updates)
A collection of relevant pointers

1. What is BSPlab?

We are working on a paper describing BSPlab in a more compact way than the complete BSPlab report, which is a large document. However, as short introductions, we can currently offer:

NEW! A short introduction to BSPlab 16 slides
The short introduction at the top of this page.
Abstract of the complete BSPlab report by Dybdahl and Uthus.
Table of contents of the complete BSPlab report by Dybdahl and Uthus.
The second part of the technical report Computational Models for Parallel Computing and BSPlab gives the motivation for the project and an introduction to BSP and BSPlab.
Other papers about BSPlab will emerge here.

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2. Available documentation

The diploma thesis written by Haakon and Ivan is a large document. It has been split into 9 main parts. All the parts, and the paper mentioned just above, have been packed in a zip-file called [bspdoc07.zip ]

Abstract [ html], Table of contents [ html], and References [ html] of the complete BSPlab report by Dybdahl and Uthus.
Part 1: [ postscript ] (2763 k)

Front page, table of contents
1. Introduction
2. The BSP model
3. The BSP Libraries Available

Part 2: [ postscript ] (1311 k)

4. Alternatives for Implementing a BSP Computer
5. Simulation and C++SIM
6. BSP Simulator Requirements

Part 3: [ postscript ] (867 k)

7. The BSPSim User's Guide

Part 4: [ postscript ] (1550 k)

8. Overall Design

Part 5: [ postscript ] (1073 k)

9. Testing of The Simulator
10. Project evaluation

Part 6: [ postscript ] (457 k)

A. Possible extensions
B. Code examples
C. C++ Coding Standard

Part 7: [ postscript ] ( 491 k)

D. Detailed class description

Part 8: [ postscript ] (402 k)

E. Source Code

Part 9: [ postscript ] ( 43 k)

F. Glossary
G. References

We also plan to make a BSPlab FAQ-list (Frequently Asked Questions).

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3. Download instructions

The BSPlab environment is written in Visual C++ (ver. 4.0, but runs also with version 5.0). It runs on PCs with Windows NT (ver. 4.0) and on Windows 95.
Read the BSPlab Copyright Notice.
Follow the steps in the BSPlab Installation guide.
(Optionally) read the steps about the utilities installation guide.
Please go to the "Feedback and mailing list" below to registrate as a user.

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4. Feedback, mailing list, and user registration.

All feedback about BSPlab should be e-mailed to "bsplab [AT] idi [dot] ntnu [dot] no" We appriciate if you send any information such as why you are interested in BSP and BSPlab, your experience with BSPlab, comments to BSPlab, suggestions for improvemenst on BSPlab and these web-pages, etc. etc.
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5. Future plans

Here is a short list of our plans for future work on BSPlab:

Documentation of what combinations of BSP programs and BSP architectures run without problems on the current version. A short report may be expected in march 98.
Paper that gives a short introduction to BSPlab, its motivation, current state, and examples of use. An old incomplete paper, describing the motivation and background for BSPlab is High-level Simulation of BSP Architectures [ postscript ] by Lasse Natvig (115k).
Provide more elegant utilities (using Perl) for doing experiments with BSPlab. Describe illustrating examples and plots on these web-pages. (expected may 98)
Evaluate the various perfomance models used in BSPlab. Validation of the quality of these will determine how valuable results from BSPlab are. Student Erik Lilleaas is currently working on this.
Use the BSPlab environment as an exercise tool in a computer architecture course.
Get more users, feedback and work out improved and more stable versions of BSPlab.

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6. Using BSPlab, examples

See chapter 7 (The BSPSim User's Guide) and chapter 9 (Testing of The Simulator) in the report by Dybdahl and Uthus. It is found in part 3 and part 5 of the documentation respectively. We hope to provide more examples in the future.

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7. Pointers to available BSP programs

Here we plan to provide a list of pointers to web-pages offering BSP programs that run in the BSPlab environment.

The regular BSPlab installation contains several BSP programs. Some examples are ...
If you have run a BSP program on BSPlab that other people may have interest in, please send a pointer to bsplab AT idi DOT ntnu DOT no
More will come....