Tools for Performance Evaluation of Computer Systems: Historical Evolution and Perspectives

Abstract : The development of software tools for performance evaluation and modeling has been an active research area since the early years of computer science. In this paper, we offer a short overview of historical evolution of the field with an emphasis on popular performance modeling techniques such as queuing networks and Petri nets. A review of recent works that provide new perspectives to software tools for performance modeling is presented, followed by a number of ideas on future research directions for the area.