🚀 go-pugleaf

I have a system which can be modeled by a large pipeline where the
stages of the pipeline perform an amount of computation which is dependent
on the particular data set which is passing through that stage (stages do
not perform the same amount of computation on each data set).  I'm
looking for some performance analysis work on similar problems.  If
you are familiar with this, please read on.

The basic overview of the model is this: each stage of the pipeline
performs the same amount of work over all of the sets of data
which must be processed.  However, the amount of computation done
at a stage varies according to which data item is flowing through
that stage.

A bit more precise (in case anyone wants to discuss this)
we consider a P-stage pipeline which is used to process n items of
data.  Label the amount of computation to be done on data item i at
stage j as Eij.  Between stages in the pipeline are large data buffers
which, for simplicity, we can assume are arbitrarily large.  The
pipeline is 'balanced' in such a way that for any stage j, the
sum E0j + E1j + ... Enj is equal to a similar sum constructed
at any other stage.

I would like some performance analysis of a system like this.  My guess
is that it will depend on the range and distribution of E*j for each stage.
Does anyone know of work done in analyzing the performance of systems
similar to this?  Since this is such a specific topic, please send replies
to me (gusciora@cs.cmu.edu) and I'll post a summary if people are
interested.

Thanks,
George Gusciora
gusciora@cs.cmu.edu
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University