Understanding Performance Aspects of Layered Software with Layered Resource
Murray Woodside
Carleton University
January 27, 2002
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Abstract
Distributed software systems are characterized by layered resources and layered services, some of them due to client-server relationships and some due to logical resources such as buffers or locks. A special family of layered performance models can be applied to model and understand the performance issues in such
systems. Layered models are associated with nested resource use. The unusual performance behavior of these systems is revealed in the patterns of behavior at bottlenecks. The seminar will describe the relationship of the models to software designs, and some features of interpretation of results.

Biography
Murray Woodside received the Ph.D. in Control Engineering from Cambridge University, England. He has taught and done research in stochastic control, optimization, queuing theory, performance modeling of communications and computer systems, and software performance. His current interests are software engineering and performance engineering of distributed systems and telecommunications software. In the period 1995 - 1999 he was Vice-Chair and Chair of SIGMetrics, the ACM Special Interest Group on performance. He currently holds the OCRI/NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Performance Engineering of Real-Time Software at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he has taught since 1970.