Swordfish: A Simulator for High-Performance Networks

SWORDFISH (Simple Wormhole Routing and Fault Injection on Simulated Hardware) is a simulator to explore the design space of high-performance networks. The simulator features a high modularity and is configurable by plug-ins. The simulated network is scalable to a large number of nodes and its modules are parameterizable to model timing, delays and buffer sizes. A simple and universal method to generate communication patterns is based on the single program multiple data (SPMD) programming model. Various topologies from distributed to centralized switches with a extendable variety of routing and arbitration functions can be generated easily. Extensive possibilities to collect both performance and statistical data gives the network designer a large set of data to prove the design decisions. Accuracy is proven by comparing the simulation results to real performance measurements of an existing network.