In this thesis, a performance estimation system of a disk array is studied. It provides software modeling as well as hardware modeling. Since a disk array is composed of hardware and software, accurate performance estimation can be achieved through hardware-software co-simulation. The performance estimation system provides a co-simulation environment for both hardware models and software model.
The performance estimation system makes use of a high-level co-simulation environment, in which, hardware models are executed by a Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) simulator called DEVS++, and software models are executed with DEVS++. For the interaction between them, an interface mechanism is devised so that the two threads of both hardware models and software model can communicate each other. Hardware models, such as SCSI disk, SCSI bus, SCSI controller, PCI bus and CPU, are modeled in DEVS. Software such as pipelining disk operation is programmed in C++ language. The software model can control the hardware models of a disk array by the interface mechanism. The performance estimation system is validated with a real disk array system, which results in less than 2% estimation error.
