This three-year award supports U.S.-France cooperative research in numeric computation with the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (INRIA). The U.S. investigators are Ahmed Sameh and Yousef Saad from the University of Minnesota, Harry Perros and William J. Stewart from North Carolina State University; and the French investigators are Brigitte Plateau, INRIA (Rhone/Alpes), Bernard Philippe, INRIA (Rennes), and Denis Trystram, University of Grenoble. The objective of their research is to evaluate the performance of crucial aspects of high-speed communication networks. They propose to evaluate the effectiveness of Stochastic Automata Networks (SANs) as a modeling technology for the analysis of telecommunications systems and development and deployment of high-speed networks. They will apply the approach to one aspect of modeling high-speed networks, namely performance analysis of packet delay and loss in a high-speed multiplexer. This multiplexer has been developed to provide flexibility in integrating multi-media traffic. The U.S. investigators bring to this collaboration expertise in numerical modeling, networking, and parallel processing. This is completed by the French investigators' expertise in Stochastic Automata Networks. Over the last decade, they developed the theory underlying SANs. The project will advance our understanding of SANs and their effectiveness in modeling performance of high-speed communication networks.
