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Performance Evaluation, Fall 98

This is the current plan for course contents and schedule. Notice that many chapters in the book are not covered completely. This is the general "bulletin board" for the lecture course, and it is updated continuously during the semester. It is advisable to check this page periodically.

Grades

The term exam grades and final grades for this class are available in WWW.
See also the most recent status of HWPs as well as the term exam and the notes concerning exam grading.

General

• Lectures:      Tue, Thu 14-16 (A414), 15.9-22.10.1998.
• Practice sessions:    Tue 12-14 (A630), 22.9-20.10.1998.
  The homeworks are given in the WWW. You get homework points (HWP) from homeworks and possibly from computer programs, one HWP from a normal homework, and more from a more difficult one. You get extra points affecting your grade linearly so that about 40% of the maximum HWP will give you 1 point, and about 90% will give you the maximum 10 points.
• Term exam:   Thu 29.10.1998 16-20 (Sali 1, päärakennus)
  Bring a calculator. You will get a copy of Appendix C at the exam.
  The final grade is determined from the term exam (max 50 points) and from the above mentioned extra points from homeworks and computer programs (max 10 points). However, you must get at least 25 points from the exam to pass.
• The newsgroup for this course is hy.opiskelu.tktl.ska. The newsgroup is intended mostly for student-to-student correspondence, although I will also read it every now and then. However, if you need to give me some immediate feedback, please use email or come and see me in my office. If the topic warrants further distribution, I will either place it in this WWW page, or post it in the above mentioned newsgroup.
• Class Feedback form (Please submit in October. Thank you)
• Office Hours
• Some of the lecture notes will be available in the WWW. They do not contain all material covered in class and they are not a replacement for the text book. Lecture notes are developed during the semester, and they may be updated at any time.
• Current status of HWPs collected is available in WWW. If you do not want your status shown here or if something is missing, please contact the instructor.
   
• NOTE: We recently (September 1st) found out that this book is currently out of print, and that neither Libri Academica nor Academic Bookstore have any copies at the present time. Academic Bookstore could order "library copies" with special hard cover materials ("kluuttikansi" in Finnish) for some 600 mk or more.

  However, after pondering the options for a while, we decided to keep the old text book and trust that all students will find a (used?) copy. Our library has one reference library (i.e., not for loan) copy available. I am sorry about the extra hassle that this causes.

  The other option, changing the text book, would have been difficult at this phase because surface shipping for it would have taken too long (6 weeks) and air freight would have cost too much (more than 100 mk). Also, the best other option for current text book [Jain 91] costs currently more than 500 mk.

  Seemingly the text book is still available from some Internet book stores (e.g., Barnes and Noble or Amazon), but only as a special order item. You may want to explore this avenue also.
  

Schedule

• Week 37   (15-17.9.98)
  • Review Probability Theory and Statistics
  • Chapter 1 [Menasce 94]. Performance and Capacity Planning
  • HW 1
• Week 38   (22-24.9.98)
  • Chapter 2. Methods for Capacity Planning
  • Chapter 3. Models for Performance Evaluation
  • Qsolver/1 Software (from text book)
  • HW 2
• Week 39   (29.9-1.10.98)
  • Chapter 4. Intuitive Solutions for Simple Models
  • Operational Analysis
  • HW 3
• Week 40   (6-8.10.98)
  • Chapter 5. Effective and Usable Solution Methods
  • HW 4
• Week 41   (13-15.10.98)
  • Chapter 6. Multiclass Models and Their Solutions
  • HW 5
• Week 42   (20-22.10.98)
  • Chapter 8. Practical Examples
  • Chapter 9. Parameter Estimation

References

• [Menasce 94]    D.A. Menasce, V.A.F. Almeida, L.W. Dowdy, Capacity Planning and Performance Modelling, Prentice Hall, 1994. Course text book.
  (Chapters 1, 2, 3.1-3.6, 3.9-3.10, 4, 5, 6, 8.1-8.2, 8.4-8.5, 9)
• [Law 91]    A.M. Law, W.D. Kelton, Simulation, Modeling and Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 1991 (second edition).
• [Weicker 90]    R.P. Weicker, An Overview of Common Benchmarks, IEEE Computer, December 1990, pp. 65-75.
• [Denning Buzen 78]    P.J. Denning, J.P. Buzen, The Operational Analysis of Queueing Network Models, Computing Surveys 10, 3 (September 1978), pp. 225-261.
• [Brumfield 81]    J. Brumfield, PMVA Purdue Mean Value Analysis Program User's Guide, Dept of CS, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, Tech. rep. CSD-TR-383 (April 1981), 24 p.
  The program is available for educational purposes from the instructor, and for commercial purposes directly from Jeff Brumfield (brumfield@cs.utexas.edu).
• [Lazowska 80]    E.D. Lazowska, The Use of Analytic Modelling in System Selection, in Conf. Proc. CMG XI, Dec 2-5, 1980, pp. 63-69.
• [Ferrari 78]    D. Ferrari, Computer Systems Performance Evaluation, Prentice-Hall, 1978.
• [LZGS 84]    E.D. Lazowska, J. Zahorjan, G.S. Graham, and K.C. Sevcik, Quantitative System Performance, Prenctice-Hall, 1984.
• [Jain 91]    R. Jain, The Art of Computer System Performance: Analysis, Techniques for Experimental Design, Measurement, Simulation and Modeling, Wiley, New York, 1991.
• Table of Standard Normal Distribution, Dept of Math, Univ. of Huntsville, Alabama, USA. (local copy)
• Table of Student Distribution, Dept of Math, Univ. of Huntsville, Alabama, USA. (local copy)
• Menasce's Qsolver/1 (DOS version, works in W95) For educational use only.
• Dhrystone benchmark

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Teemu Kerola